Vincent Cable: Can the Secretary of State explain why a major NHS reform that was politically contentious was not launched by her in Parliament but by an official in the recess? Can she nevertheless give us an assurance that PCTs that are working well through joint working with local councils and running good community hospitals will be left to continue their work rather than being subject to the Maoist process of constant reorganisation and revolutionary upheaval?

David Howarth: Does the Secretary of State accept that one of the problems with amalgamations of PCTs is that many PCTs suffer historic financial deficits, making them very unattractive partners for other PCTs? Will she undertake to stabilise the financial situation of any PCT that is proposed to be amalgamated?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. There is a minority of PCTs that are in deficit according to last year's accounts and having to manage a financial recovery plan now. That is not in itself a bar to a merger if there are good reasons for PCTs to merge and many of them have been discussing mergers for many months, but it is an issue that not only the PCTs but the strategic health authority will need to look at closely and it underlines the importance of PCTs and other parts of the NHS that have deficits meeting their commitment to getting those deficits under control and achieving their financial recovery targets in the current financial year.

Iris Robinson: Is the Minister content that preparation in Northern Ireland is as advanced as that anywhere else in the United Kingdom, particularly when it comes to stockpiling anti-viral drugs, and will she reassure the people of Northern Ireland that that is the case?

Angela Eagle: Is my hon. Friend worried about the outbreak of avian flu in quarantine? The parrot seems to have been infected by being too closely connected with Taiwanese birds. Is she in touch with Ministers from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the lessons that need to be learned on the importation of birds from areas in which avian flu is more prevalent, so that we can reduce the risk of the avian flu virus getting out of quarantine?

Caroline Flint: As we speak, in Europe the Agriculture and Fisheries Council is discussing imports of exotic birds. On quarantine rules, there are no instructions that prevent different batches of birds being mixed, but the quarantine period for all birds starts from the date on which the last batch of birds entered quarantine. Birds are kept for 30 days, provided that all disease tests are negative, and they are released only on the instruction of a vet from the state veterinary service. We should all be reassured that that parrot was identified and dealt with, which means that we are still avian flu-free in the United Kingdom.

Caroline Flint: I understand that Opposition Members paid tribute in last week's debate to the way in which our emergency services prepare for different scenarios. Operational guidance to help NHS planners prepare for the pandemic has been provided, and clinical management and infection control guidelines have also been published for comment. The discussion is ongoing, and we seek to learn and listen.—[Interruption.] Issues such as bed spaces and the provision of services are under discussion.

Ann Winterton: Notwithstanding the right hon. Lady's previous replies, is she aware that vital services, including accident and emergency, maternity services and children's services, are being threatened at the East Cheshire NHS Trust district general hospital at Macclesfield? All three Members of Parliament representing the area—my hon. Friends the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) and myself—are completely opposed to what might happen, which would mean that our constituents might have to travel for at least an hour to get to emergency services. Will the Secretary of State look into that issue and agree to see all three of us to discuss it?

Jane Kennedy: The right hon. Gentleman asks a detailed question, and with my mental arithmetic not being good as it should be, I will get back to him on the detail. His general point, however, is important. We decided to agree those new contracts and pay the salaries that go with them precisely because we needed to retain really good people in the health service. That is what the whole process was about.

David Davies: The CMO's report makes clear that the British Pregnancy Advisory Service was actively encouraging vulnerable women to undergo late-term abortions in Spain. Whatever the legality of that, will the Minister join me in expressing abhorrence of the fact that a publicly funded body is engaging in such a practice? Why do Islamic terrorist suspects and convicted criminals apparently have more human rights than unborn children?

Caroline Flint: I thank my hon. Friend for raising those issues, many of which are subject to the recommendations on training and support. We will work with BPAS and with primary care trusts to see how we can provide such support. I should make it clear for the record that 88 per cent. of abortions happen under 13 weeks, and 60 per cent. happen under 10 weeks. One reason why we have achieved that result is that we have made this a performance-management subject for PCTs to deliver on.

Ruth Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There have been big improvements at GCSE level too, with 63,000 more 16-year-olds achieving five or more good GCSE passes than in 1997. In addition, change has been greatest in many areas of historic underperformance. In inner London, 50 per cent. more young people gained five good grades this year than eight years ago.
	Specialist schools consistently out-perform other schools and nearly 2,400 have now been established. Twenty-seven academies are already open, with more to come. There are now 413 non-selective schools where 70 per cent. or more pupils gain five good GCSEs; in 1997, there were just 83.
	This is a record of success. However, challenges remain. For all the progress so far, too many 11-year-olds still leave primary school without mastering the three R's; too many 16-year-olds are still not achieving good GCSEs or vocational qualifications and too few are staying in education post 16. Parents often feel disengaged and too many schools are coasting rather than improving. And those who fail to achieve too often come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
	We are at an historic turning point. We have an education system that has overcome more than half a century of underperformance. With courage to reform further, by placing the parent and the pupil right at the heart of the system, we can now make our schools truly world class—a system that commands parental confidence and extends excellence to all.
	There will be no return to the divisive 11-plus. There will be no return to the unfair assisted places scheme. There will be no return to privileging a few schools at the expense of the rest. Instead, teaching will be rigorously tailored for pupils of all aptitudes in schools unafraid to be distinctive, proud of their individual ethos yet proud, too, of the communities that they serve.
	Our best schools and school leaders are models in all these respects. The challenge of change is for all schools to emulate the best, forging whatever partnerships they need to enhance their leadership and mission, while giving parents real power to drive change.
	Today's White Paper sets out six key reform priorities to bring this about. First, to improve teaching and learning, we will provide significant new incentives for schools to tailor education to the needs of each and every child. There will be more use of small group and one-to-one tuition, particularly for those who fall behind. We will intensify our focus on literacy and numeracy, which are the keys to success in all subjects. There will be expanded opportunities for gifted and talented pupils. We will further encourage setting and grouping pupils by ability. We will continue to expand and improve provision for pupils with special educational needs, enabling far more special schools to join the successful specialist school movement and share their expertise widely with all local schools.
	There will be a national delivery plan for the creation of the new specialised diplomas that I announced in February to transform educational choices for pupils beyond the age of 14. All of this will be underpinned by the Government's record investment in schools, including £335 million to be specifically earmarked for personalised learning within the new dedicated schools grant that I announced to the House last week. Work force reform and the increased use of information and communication technology will further transform the capacity of schools to meet the needs of each and every child.
	Secondly, we will give all schools the independence that they need to drive radical improvements in standards and the flexibility to create real centres of excellence. Building on our successful specialist school and academies programmes, we will extend academy-style freedoms and opportunities to thousands of schools through new trust schools. These self-governing schools will be funded by local authorities but will partner with and be supported by not-for-profit trusts—established, for example, by successful educational foundations, leading schools and universities, parents' groups and voluntary organisations. These schools will bring extra dynamism to education. All schools will be eligible to be trust schools, alongside our planned 200 academies.
	I am pleased to announce that a range of outstanding organisations, including Microsoft, the Open university, the Mercers Company and Thomas Telford school, the United Learning trust, the Church of England, KPMG and the Peabody trust have all agreed to work with us to develop the trust model, bringing to it extensive educational and school-management experience, together with strong links to local communities.
	Thirdly, we will improve the choice of schools for parents by giving less affluent parents the means to make choice effective, and by putting in place much more rapid mechanisms for turning round and replacing failing schools. A choice between weak or failing schools is no choice at all. Schools that are still failing after a year will be closed, federated with another more successful school or replaced with an academy or another new provider. Our new inspection regime will focus on schools that are coasting as well as on those that are failing. We will raise the bar on underperformance across the system. In addition, we will improve the advice for parents on the options available. We will improve transport to school, particularly for the most deprived pupils where the cost of transport can be a barrier; and we will promote admission systems that extend access, and ensure fair admissions for all new schools.
	The role of the parent does not stop with the choice of school. Education works best where schools and parents work together, with each recognising both their rights and their responsibilities. So fourthly, we will enable all parents to contribute much more fully throughout a child's school career, with better support, information and advice, especially at key transition points. We will place a new duty on governing bodies to have regard to parents' views. We will improve the quality and regularity of the dialogue between parents and schools, including reports at least once a term in place of the existing minimum of once a year. We will give parents a new right of complaint to Ofsted, if local procedures have been exhausted.
	Fifthly, teachers and heads have asked us for better support to tackle disruption and ill-discipline, so we will implement Sir Alan Steer's recommendations, giving teachers a clear statutory right to discipline and giving schools an unambiguous power to set and enforce their own discipline codes. Parents will take their responsibilities seriously or face sanctions where they do not, including fixed penalty notices for parents who do not properly supervise pupils who are excluded from school. Pupils excluded for more than five days—not 15 days as now—will be expected to attend supervised education units.
	Sixthly, we will underpin our reforms with a new and crucial role for local authorities. They will become the commissioner of education, the champion of the pupil and parent and the local strategic leader. They will tackle coasting and failing schools. They will oversee competitions to deliver new schools, and they will work with the office of the schools commissioner that I will create to promote new trust schools and academies in response to parental demand. Many local authorities are already pioneering that approach. We now need all our local authorities to do so.
	These reforms mark a watershed in the development of our national education system. All our young people deserve the best; we intend them to receive it, so that social mobility once again accelerates as the engine of a fairer and more prosperous society—every pupil receiving a tailored education, every parent with real choice and every school with the freedom to deliver.
	I commend the White Paper to the House.

David Cameron: I thank the Secretary of State for her statement—on the Conservative Benches, I think that feeling goes fairly wide. I am also grateful for an early copy of the White Paper, especially as I understand that 5,000 copies were pulped last night as the Cabinet could not actually agree on the policy.
	Our approach to the Secretary of State's proposals will be straightforward: wherever the Government promote rigour, encourage discipline, give schools more autonomy and parents more choice, we will support them. And, as we read that the Chancellor, the Deputy Prime Minister and many other Labour Members are against her, she will need all the support that she can get, but there is one question that jumps out of the White Paper. Eight years ago, the Government abolished grant-maintained schools. Let us remember that those were state schools, free of local authority control and able to set their own culture and ethos. Does that sound familiar? So why has it taken eight years to get right back to where they started?
	Let me take each of the key issues in turn. First, on school autonomy, all the evidence shows that standards rise when schools are free to innovate, free to diversify, and free to specialise. The question for the Government is this: will today's proposals lead to real autonomy? Real autonomy means schools controlling their own finances. So will the Secretary of State confirm that, under her plans, funding will still go through local education authorities and not directly to schools? Real autonomy means that head teachers are in control, not tied up in centralised rules, regulations and bureaucracy. So will she take action to cut paperwork, including the current self-evaluation reports that run to hundreds of pages and drive head teachers up the wall?
	What guarantee can the Secretary of State give that the White Paper will not add to bureaucracy? Can she explain the point of the new schools commissioner? Can she tell us whether her new parents' councils will replace governing bodies or whether they will be set up in addition to them? If Government want real autonomy—they will have our support if they deliver it—can she confirm that those independent schools in the state sector will own their buildings and land, employ their own staff and have the freedom to expand and the ability to opt out of national agreements?
	The White Paper shows a complete muddle about the role of local education authorities. Can the Secretary of State tell us how much independence those schools will really have? Can she explain why, on page 28— hon. Members will be interested in this—it says:
	"Trust schools will be funded in exactly the same way as other local schools. They will be subject to the Code of Practice on admissions and to all of the accountability mechanisms that apply to state schools."
	So can she explain what these new freedoms are? That gives every impression of having been written by a deeply divided committee—I think that we can call it the Cabinet.—[Interruption.]
	We support the proposal to get independent providers into the state sector, but we have heard that so many times from the Government: we heard it in 1998, 2002 and earlier this year. Can the Secretary of State confirm that, so far, just one—[Interruption.]

Ruth Kelly: I am truly delighted that the hon. Gentleman has come here today to welcome the proposals in the White Paper. It might be only his fourth appearance at the Dispatch Box, but I think that it is a sign of his increasing political maturity that when there are well-thought-out proposals that will make a difference to our school system, he can stand there and welcome them, no matter what that might mean for his own political ambitions, or anything else relating to his side of the House. I hope that the support that the hon. Gentleman has offered us today will mean that his party—whoever leads it—will support the legislation that we will bring forward to enact the proposals that I have set out today. I look forward to his and his colleagues' support in the Division Lobby.
	I was glad that the hon. Gentleman did not challenge the fact that there have been significant improvements in our school system over the past eight years and the fact that we have transformed the situation that we inherited in 1997. However, he should recognise that that has been achieved not only through reform—although reform there has been with the literacy hour, the numeracy hour and the other reforms that I mentioned—but because of the investment that we have been putting in. By 2007–08, Labour will have doubled per pupil spending since 1997. He might not have sat in the House for very long, but during that short time, he has voted against every single opportunity to put investment back into our schools where it is needed. He has also voted against innovation in our schools, modernising school governance and laying the foundation for work force remodelling. I am thus pleased to hear that he is changing his party's political tune. However, today was his first big test, so I had rather hoped that he would have done his homework just a little better.
	The hon. Gentleman thinks that our new trust-school system will represent the re-creation of grant-maintained schools. There could be nothing more different from the new model that we are proposing for all schools than the failed grant-maintained system of the past. There are some similarities.—[Interruption.] Let us see what they are. Grant-maintained schools had classrooms, teachers and books. I have to admit that there are some similarities, but that is where they end. Grant-maintained schools could set whatever admissions arrangements they wanted, they could select the best pupils and were encouraged to opt out of the local family of schools. Indeed, they were bribed to do so, because they were given unfair funding that discriminated against other schools. They operated on the basis of unfair admissions that privileged elite schools by cream-skimming pupils from our state schools. Grant-maintained schools received the only capital funding on offer in the system. Anyone who remembers those days will recall the two-tier system that emerged. Indeed, grant-maintained schools defined themselves through opposition to other schools in the system. They did the best for their children, but not for others.
	We are not proposing the return of the grant-maintained school, because our schools rightly insist on fair funding, fair admissions and fair accountability. We want autonomous schools that drive improvement for their own pupils and others by sharing that expertise and success across the school system, as we have set out in the schools White Paper. The hon. Gentleman asked what school autonomy means in practice. Schools will have the opportunity to develop their own mission, purpose and ethos, and to work with an external partner if they think that that is in the interests of parents and pupils. They will be able to manage their own assets and employ their own staff. They will be able to control the funding distributed to them by local authorities and ring-fenced through the dedicated school grant. To argue that they should be free of accountability and should not have to participate in the self-evaluation scheme that head teachers themselves have requested from us is absurd. The way to drive improvement through the system is for one head teacher to learn what works from another so that they can apply it in their school to improve standards for their own pupils and others.
	The hon. Gentleman argued for autonomy on admissions but, once again, his proposals are not thought through. I read an article that he wrote in the Evening Standard last week in which he said that over time all schools should be able to determine their own admissions procedures and, if they wanted to do so, select pupils.

Ruth Kelly: Absolutely.
	The hon. Gentleman argued that some schools will want to select by academic ability. He pretends that that does not mean the return of the grammar school, and that if some schools want to select by ability, all other schools can have their own individual ethos. In fact, when that system operates on the ground 80 per cent. of children are left in the equivalent of secondary moderns with no aspirations for attainment, which does not drive improvement across the system. I do not want to return to that, and I hope that when the hon. Gentleman thinks through the consequences of his policy he will draw back from it. His only criticism of the academies programme, as far as I could see, was that academies in our most disadvantaged areas are not allowed to select. His policy would promote the well-being of a few, not the many, but the policies in the White Paper will drive improvement across our school system by delivering the freedoms and accountabilities that those schools need to develop in a way that works best for them and their pupils.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about bussing. I do not propose to force any child on to a bus, but we have to raise the aspirations of children in our most disadvantaged areas. We have a specialist school system. If a specialist school offers sport, music or another specialism of which children wish to take advantage, we should not prevent them from going to that school because of the cost of transport. We recommend in the White Paper that children from a low-income background be given help with the costs of transport. The hon. Gentleman asked about discipline. The last time a right to discipline was recommended was in 1989, but the Government of the day rejected it. We will implement such a right, and we will implement all the other recommendations in the report from Sir Alan Steer's panel. Interestingly, that panel did not consider that the abolition of appeals panels would be in schools' interests. It knew what happens when appeals panels are abolished—difficult cases end up in the courts. We have seen an example of that only recently. Head teachers know that that will not be in their own best interests.
	The hon. Gentleman questions the role that local authorities have to play. We have articulated in the White Paper a clear, if radically reformed, new role for local authorities. They will be at the heart of our proposals for delivering the school system of the future. Yes, they will replace the school organisation committee and there will be a presumption that where good schools want to expand, they should be able to. But to imagine that one could run a school system from Whitehall that caters not just for 500 grant-maintained schools, but for 23,000 schools is absurd. How would someone in Whitehall know what was wanted for schools in Bolton, what parents wanted delivered on the ground for schools in my constituency, what capital investment was needed, or what teachers were needed? It is ridiculous to suggest that that could be the case. Local authorities will have a new if radically reformed role under our schools White Paper.
	Although the hon. Gentleman seeks to appear as the modern face of the Conservative party, what we see is policies which, at the first hint of scrutiny, start to unravel—policies that serve the few, rather than the many. Ours are policies that will drive up standards right across our school system and particularly serve the needs of the most disadvantaged at the heart of our communities.

Ruth Kelly: In some senses, Mr. Speaker, it is hard to reply. The hon. Gentleman has made a list of eclectic points that do not address the kind of public service reform that we should deliver in our school system or how we should deliver excellence and equity for all.
	The hon. Gentleman has, however, made a number of specific points, and I shall deal with them. He is right that we must concentrate on the three R's. Surely he does not dispute the facts that we have increased the number of pupils gaining the right outcomes in reading, writing and arithmetic from 43 per cent. to 57 per cent. over the past eight years, which is a huge improvement. We are meeting our targets for English and maths, with almost four out of five children achieving the required level. He is also right that we must do more, and the White Paper sets aside sums to deliver further results in primary schools and, indeed, in secondary schools.
	The transition years in secondary schools are particularly important. Where children fall behind in English and maths, we should enable them to attend specific catch-up classes to help sort out the basics, which will allow them to access the rest of the curriculum and make the most of the opportunities in secondary schools. The White Paper deals with how teaching and learning should be delivered and how we can create a more personalised, tailored system, so that everybody not only gets the basics right, but takes advantage of extra support and opportunities for the gifted and talented.
	The hon. Gentleman is right that falling school rolls raise several issues for the future. We will deal with those issues through the building schools for the future programme, which allows individual local authorities to take advantage of the capital investment on offer, to think out their educational vision for an area and to build schools in the right places that meet pupil need and parent demand. That programme is probably the biggest lever over falling rolls that any Government have ever used.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that some schools will not want to expand the number of pupils that they take because they pride themselves on the small-school ethos that they have developed for their pupils. We will not force any school to expand if it does not want to, but a successful school that wants to expand faces obstacles because of the interests represented on the school organisation committees. If the local authority assumes the role of strategic leader of the system, it can make better-informed decisions about what is right for an area.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that there are difficulties in getting parents involved, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned special needs and looked-after children. We deal with those two groups in detail in the White Paper. In the new admissions system, looked-after children will have priority in being considered for and getting into the best schools. In terms of special educational needs, we want to ensure the continuation of the situation whereby children with statements get priority and an automatic right of entry to those schools.
	We want schools that are free to follow their curriculum and to develop their individual ethos but also free to work in collaboration with other schools to raise standards for everyone in their local area. That is what the White Paper is about.

Jeremy Corbyn: Is the Secretary of State aware that, in inner city communities, where comprehensive schools have improved and taken many local children on to their rolls, the whole community benefits, crime falls and there is a better sense of community cohesion? How is my constituency helped at all by the proposals, which, I suspect, will mean many children travelling all over London, with all the problems that that entails and the attendant loss of community?

Laura Moffatt: My right hon. Friend recently visited one of our three brand new secondary schools in Crawley. The school, which used to be unpopular with parents and had falling rolls, is now a sports excellence college and people are fighting to get their children in there. It also has an excellent record of working with pupils who have been excluded or who are having trouble getting into a school. How will the White Paper help it to build on its excellent relationship with the pupil referral units, to allow it to continue that fantastic work?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the fact not only that standards have been rising across all schools, but that those in schools in the most disadvantaged areas have been catching up with the rest. Our proposals will try to bring in an external partner—for those schools that want one, not where the school or the parents do not want one—to the schools that need that most. If a school in a disadvantaged area has improved rapidly, but should be doing even better for the children, it should have the first bite of the cherry. Such schools should be the first to look for an external partner, if they want to go down that road and if they think they could benefit from being linked up with a trust.
	The schools commissioner, who will be based in the Department, will work with local authorities to set up those trusts, but also to match-make, so that they go to the schools that need them most and so that those trusts do not cherry-pick the best schools and the best pupils, but really work for the most disadvantaged pupils.

Clive Efford: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her statement, but may I ask her whether she believes that parent power will in any respect stand in the way of expanding schools and improving them? Where are the schools that want to expand to take on more challenging pupils?
	Are we not empowering parents who have moved heaven and earth to get near to the successful schools, and who often have moved house to do so? Will they turn round and say, "Yes, expand this school and make it bigger to take on those more challenging pupils," when they feel that they have left those pupils behind through their ability to move closer to the most successful schools? I urge my right hon. Friend to think very carefully about the system we are introducing. Are not these proposals in danger of being a charter for the chattering classes to leave behind the inner city secondary schools, as they have always done in our education system? What mechanisms will she put in place to ensure that that does not happen?

Brian Binley: May I thank the right hon. Lady for gladdening my heart? I fear, however, that she has depressed many of her colleagues, and I wish her well in the battle ahead. In relation to local authorities, I was particularly interested in the phrase in her statement, "They will oversee competitions to deliver new schools". I hope that that will gladden my heart, too. Will she explain that statement a little more?

Peter Luff: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Licensing Act 2003 in relation to touring circuses; and for connected purposes.
	When the world is so troubled by natural disasters, international terrorism, threats of flu pandemics, the impact of climate change and scandalous poverty, malnutrition and disease, circus may seem a rather trivial matter for the House to consider, but I believe that the performing arts have a vital contribution to make to the wealth of our nation, and circus is perhaps the most overlooked, undervalued and misunderstood performing art of them all. Today, touring circus is not just misunderstood; its very existence is under threat.
	I am a school friend of Gary Smart, grandson of the legendary Billy Smart, and I freely confess that since then circus has been in my blood. This summer I was delighted to see two very different circuses, the charming and intimate Gifford's circus and the outstanding and exhilarating Zippo's. At both, the looks on the faces of the children, and for that matter the adults, were enough to persuade me to continue the campaign to save the circus from extinction.
	Neither of those two circuses uses wild animals, and I must make it clear at the outset that the Bill has nothing whatever to do with the use of wild animals in circuses. Indeed, I signed early-day motion 468, which expressed concern about the use of such animals in circuses. Of the 30 to 40 touring circuses, only about three still use wild animals, only one to any significant extent. The overwhelming majority of circuses are now all-human, or use only domestic animals. The Bill is about protecting a fine British tradition that was born on the south side of Westminster bridge, on land now owned by St Thomas' hospital. It was begun in 1768 by Philip Astley, a retired sergeant-major who had served in the 15th Light Dragoons in the seven years war and who was a gifted horseman. Initially he became an equestrian trick rider, and performed at pleasure gardens in London. He opened a riding school just across the river, added other acts and set up a ring, calling it "the circus"—which derived, I believe, from the French word for a circle.
	For many thousands of young people, a touring circus is now their first introduction to live performing art. Circuses are the last unsubsidised touring art form in the country, visiting some of the smallest as well as some of the largest communities of our land. Circus is a profoundly democratic art form, and its very nature is multicultural. The innocent pleasure that circuses bring, however—as highly talented professionals risk their lives twice daily—is threatened, although I am sure that it is unintentional, by the Licensing Act.
	The debate about the Licensing Act has concentrated on alcohol-related antisocial behaviour, 24-hour drinking and, to an extent, the Act's impact on village halls and sports clubs. But the Act also threatens to destroy the touring circus. That is hardly surprising, as it simply was not constructed with the needs of touring circuses in mind. Indeed, the circus industry had been promised total exemption from its provisions, just like that granted to travelling fairgrounds and even to Morris dancers. It was realised too late that that promise had been broken—or perhaps just forgotten.
	I have taken industry representatives to meet Ministers on three occasions. Those meetings have always been courteous, including that with the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), whom I am glad to see in his place today. But the policy has not changed at all. I have initiated two Adjournment debates, asked many questions and written many letters to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I hope, even at this eleventh hour, that I can persuade Ministers to embrace this Bill, which is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the Licensing Act.
	I am not alone in my concern. I am sure that Ministers know that Arts Council England continues to be concerned that the Act will have a damaging and lasting impact on the circus industry. The central problem is that the Act requires premises to be licensed. That is fine for a theatre that does not move, but it is a real issue for a touring circus that moves many times a year. So the Royal Opera house needs one licence, while a small touring circus needs 40, and sometimes as many as 60, separate licences. Getting 40 or more licences poses three problems for circuses, the first of which is cost. There is the cost not just of the fee but of duplicating plans, advertising the application and so on. Even without costing the labour to make the application, the average cost for just one licence is about £600. Most circuses operate on very small margins, and for 40 venues, £600 per venue works out at £24,000 a year.
	The second problem is the bureaucracy. It is very difficult for a small circus out on tour—often, such organisations are very small indeed—to go through all the complex formalities needed to apply for a licence. All but the largest circuses have no back office beyond the one that travels with them in a caravan on the road. Organising photocopying and advertising, and dealing with local authorities in other parts of the country, imposes an intolerable—indeed, impossible—additional burden on these very small operators.
	The third and perhaps most serious problem is the resultant inflexibility. Touring circuses need to be flexible. Their schedules change all the time. Bad weather can make a field unusable, and a competitor may have exhausted the market for circuses in a particular place the previous week. A circus responds by changing its intended venue, but under the Act it cannot be flexible. The time that it takes to apply for a licence means that it cannot change its plans, and it loses its revenue for the whole week because it either does not put on shows at all, or performs to very small audiences.
	But the situation gets worse. It is now obvious that local authorities simply do not know how to treat circuses under the Act. Some are effectively refusing to licence them at all, while others are making obtaining a licence very difficult. Some are saying that the land on which the tent is erected needs a licence, while others are saying that the tent—the big top—needs one. Some are even saying that circuses are not covered by the Act at all and do not need licences. Cost, bureaucracy, inflexibility and now confusion: this fearful foursome means that the Licensing Act is likely to kill all but the three or four largest circuses, unless we make changes.
	It is not as if circuses do not already have enough legislation to comply with. Licensing circuses will not add in any way to public safety, or provide any extra safeguards for local communities. They already liaise with local authorities, fire brigades and police forces about their sites, and any advice offered is always acted on. A complex and detailed web of legislation is already in place. I have in my hand the operational manual of one touring circus—Zippo's. Such a manual is needed to ensure that it complies with health and safety requirements, fire regulations, disability discrimination regulations, food safety and hygiene requirements, noise control rules, regulations for the safe storage of oil and gas, and requirements for all manner of risk assessments. Such assessments include a detailed analysis of the risks posed by the domestic budgerigars used in a particular act.
	I also have in my hand the 12 certificates that a touring circus is already required to have, many of which must be applied for annually. They are a certification of test and examination of lifting equipment; a fire extinguisher inspection certificate; a flame-retardant application certificate; a National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting electrical installation report; a first aid qualification; a food hygiene certificate; a public liability insurance certificate; employer's liability insurance; an animal trainer licence; a veterinary inspection certificate; water extraction permission; and staff training documentation for fire, health and safety and manual handling. Anyhow, the purpose of the Act was to provide safeguards around the use and abuse of alcohol. Circuses do not serve alcohol and I am aware of no public order issues around circuses. Families with children intent on a good time do not usually take part in antisocial behaviour: the closest to it is probably the behaviour of the clowns in the circus ring.
	The Bill provides three different routes for the Government to use to solve the problem. All three will be on the basis of an order-making power for the Secretary of State, but there will be a requirement for at least one of them to be implemented within a specific period.
	The first possibility—my preferred route—is the annual licensing of circuses. The nature of the licence and the body responsible for issuing it will be left to secondary legislation. The Secretary of State could issue it him or herself, or it could be issued by the Health and Safety Executive, the home local authority of the circus, or any other body deemed appropriate by the Minister. The big top would be licensed, and unless there were changes to the layout of the big top during the season, the licence would be valid for a calendar year and no local authority would be able to overturn it.
	The second possibility is the amendment of the temporary event notice procedure for circuses. The TEN regime is also designed for particular static venues like village halls and pubs. This clause would permit a special category of TEN, developed specifically for circuses, with more TENs available for longer periods and for larger audiences. A tight definition of what constitutes a circus should remove any risk of "creep" of the provision beyond circuses.
	The third possibility is a provision to exempt circuses from the Licensing Act 2003 altogether. The Minister thinks that he already has the power to do this—I hope he will do so if he does have that power—but I am not so convinced. This would be an important fall-back provision if, for any reason, the first two routes proved unworkable.
	Circuses are in real jeopardy unless the Government act. It was never intended that the Licensing Act 2003 should have this outcome. My Bill is simple, workable and sets no dangerous precedent. It just delivers what the Government originally promised to circuses. I know that the present Government have a fondness for regulation, and they often seem a tad serious in their approach—perhaps more Roundhead than Cavalier. I hope that Ministers in what was once known as the "Ministry of Fun" can now live up to that name and agree that circus is fun, is threatened, is worth saving and can be saved. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Peter Luff, Harry Cohen, Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas, Mark Fisher, Andrew George, Mr. Michael Jack, Kate Hoey, Mr. Austin Mitchell, Miss Julie Kirkbride, Lembit Opik, Stephen Pound and Mr. John Whittingdale.

Harriet Harman: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	As Members of this House, we are all here because we are elected to represent our constituents under our democratic system. That is an extraordinary privilege, and as we swing through those Doors marked "Members Only" we cannot help but feel a sense of pride. However, I bring the Electoral Administration Bill to the House on Second Reading today because all is not well with our democracy. As Members, we need to acknowledge the problems; as the Government, we need to take action to tackle them.
	The legitimacy of our democracy depends on three things—everyone having the right to vote, everyone wanting to vote and no one fiddling the vote. However, we have problems with each of those three legs of the stool. Before I come to the specific measures that I am commending to the House in the Bill, I want to make it clear that the problems of under-registration and low turnout are not evenly spread, so those problems with our democracy are the map of inequality in our society.
	We are all familiar with the concept of social exclusion—with communities that suffer from poorer health, lower educational achievement and worse housing—and we all agree that it is the business of Government to act to tackle the problems. However, what is less accepted is that social exclusion has a political dimension—that although the better off are on the register and go out to vote, people in poorer communities are more likely to be left off the register and are less likely to go out to vote.
	As the Constitutional Affairs Committee pointed out in its report of March this year, people who are white owner-occupiers in non-metropolitan areas will be on the register. However, about 3 million people—most of whom are poor, council tenants, black and living in inner cities—will not be. In those areas, low registration and low turnout compound each other to create what I call democracy deserts, where it is the norm not to vote. Therefore, the Bill contains measures to ensure that those hard to reach people are included on the electoral register.

Harriet Harman: The problem of young people not voting is so acute that, with respect, I would say to right hon. and hon. Members who say, "No, that is a bad idea", that we are not in a position to rule out any options. We must be as open minded as we can possibly be on this issue.
	I hope that the provision in the Bill to allow parents to take their children into the polling booth with them will enable parents to show their children how to vote and give them the opportunity to teach their children democracy in practice.

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman advances strongly the arguments that are in favour of changing the voting age and reducing it from 18 to 16. I have said that, as well as pursuing citizenship classes and many other measures, we will try to keep as open a mind as possible. It is not a question of people losing the habit of voting. A generation of people are growing up who have never voted. They have never got into the habit of voting.
	We are proposing lowering the age of candidacy from 21 to 18 in line with the change in voting age that has already taken place, opening up the possibility of teenage Members for the first time. Hon. Members have expressed their concern that our system denies some members of our armed forces the right to vote. I acknowledge the representations on this issue of the hon. Members for Gosport (Peter Viggers) and for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), the Minister for Industry and the Regions, my right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael), and the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes). Many other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have also brought the issue to my attention.
	As a result of those representations, I have met my right hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for the armed forces, and the Electoral Commission has, together with the armed forces, begun a concerted campaign to ensure that every member of the armed forces gets on the register and then gets either a postal vote or a proxy vote. It must be right to make absolutely sure that our servicemen and women, away from their homes on national service, do not thereby lose their right to vote. We shall monitor the situation to ensure that the changes are working, and the first test will be the May 2006 elections.

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman has been to the fore in bringing that to our attention and he is right to express frustration. I understand the strength of feeling about the matter. We are determined to monitor the situation and take forward practical measures. One of the problems was that there was no accepted figure for the amount of under-registration in the armed forces. To some extent, people said that there was no problem, but now that it has been acknowledged it will be tackled and measured to ensure that our proposals work. I hope that we can make progress on that.

Oliver Heald: As the Minister will know, originally service personnel filled in a service voter card and were thereafter registered to vote in the constituency they specified, but now an annual update is required to the local registration officer in whichever constituency the person wants to vote, which has caused a problem for the armed forces. What will the Minister do to get around that problem? Can we go back to the old system or have a new one that ensures that our service men can vote?

Harriet Harman: We need to be sure that the concerted efforts to be made by the MOD, the Electoral Commission and the armed forces to get service personnel on to the register make progress. If they do not, we shall have to look into other ways of dealing with the matter. We are absolutely fixed on the objective of getting members of our armed forces on to the register and enabling them to vote. Quite frankly, whatever means we need—whether primary or secondary legislation, or whatever—we must take those measures to make that happen. If a different system for armed forces personnel than for people who are not in the armed forces is necessary, we can take that step.

Harriet Harman: I pay tribute to the Select Committee's work under the right hon. Gentleman's leadership. He raises an important issue in the Committee's work and in the House today. People who have voted all their lives find it exasperating if they go down to the polling and are told that they cannot vote because they are not on the electoral register. They usually protest and say, "How can the council think that I am not there? They sent me a council tax bill yesterday." We should ensure that we strike off people who have moved and so on—it is important that the register is as accurate as possible —but whether we can use data sharing to check who is or is not in an area is something that the Electoral Commission's performance standards can address.
	Some electoral registration officers feel that they are not allowed to carry out data checking to tackle either any gap in the register or people whose names may have fallen off the register. To clarify that, we will state in secondary legislation that they have the right to check all the data that they have. We will also consider whether we need secondary legislation to give them access to other data beyond what is held by councils for the purpose of completing the electoral register. Under the Bill, we will require them to check the data that they hold to ensure that their register is as complete as possible.

John Spellar: Will my right hon. and learned Friend be cautious when following suggestions about individual registration and take careful note of the experience in Northern Ireland? There was a substantial drop in numbers on the electoral register there and representations on ways to remedy that were made across a wide part of the political spectrum. Yes, we need an accurate register, but we must ensure that it is comprehensive too. I certainly do not think that we should consider introducing individual registration before many other measures have bedded down to enable us to ensure that the maximum number of people is on the register.

Oliver Heald: Not at the moment.
	The pilot schemes are becoming something of an abuse. When they were originally proposed in 2000, it seemed right to try out some of these ideas, and we were prepared to accept the schemes. However, Ministers are now setting up pilot schemes year after year. We have now reached the point, particularly as the schemes are not monitored by this place, at which this has become an abuse. If Ministers want to undertake pilot schemes, they should at the very least announce them to the House. They do not do so at present. I would suggest that they should go further, and that we should have a right to approve those schemes. Otherwise, this could go on for ever, with Ministers choosing the battlefield and deciding how an election is to be conducted in a particular place. That is dangerous.
	If the Minister wants to increase the turnout at an election, she must recognise the role of political parties, rather than merely tinkering with the electoral system. The Bill sends out some wrong signals. The long-delayed creation of an electronic electoral register is welcome, but we need solid assurances that the information that political parties currently receive from local authorities, and the additional information that will become available through the central data stream, will be made fully available to political parties, without reservation.
	The Government are going to allow independent candidates to use almost whatever description they choose about themselves. However, it would be wrong to allow that while restricting the descriptions that political parties can use. Someone could stand as the Sedgefield independent candidate but not as the Sedgefield Labour candidate, and that would be wrong. Will the Minister look again at that proposal?
	The rules governing candidates' expenses are also to be changed. A four-month rule will be introduced, replacing the start of poll as the beginning point for election expenses. That will take us back to prospective parliamentary candidates and parliamentary spokesmen circumventing the rules, which we really cannot have. There is also to be a measure to reduce the percentage of votes that a candidate must poll in order not to forfeit their deposit, from 5 per cent. to 2 per cent. I have great worries about that, because it will help extremists such as the British National party.

Jim Devine: Let me say first that this is a truly magnificent place, and it is a great honour to represent my constituents here within. May I place on record my appreciation, as the new boy in this place, for the support and warmth that I have received from right hon. and hon. Members, from both sides of the House, which is very much appreciated? In particular, I want to place on record the advice that I have received about this, my maiden speech: all of it has been totally contradictory, but it has been very helpful.
	This is a place that I would not want to be in, if that meant that Robin Cook was still alive. Robin Cook was described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr. Brown), as the outstanding parliamentarian of his generation. In this place, Robin was known for his intellect, his wit and his drive. I knew him, as his election agent since 1982, for the work that he did in his constituency. Throughout Livingston, there are many monuments to the work that Robin Cook did for the people of Livingston and West Lothian: St. John's hospital, the rail link between Bathgate and Edinburgh, new schools and new colleges of education—all tributes to the great work that Robin did.
	What was striking, and what marked Robin out as an outstanding politician, was the work that he did for ordinary people in his constituency. It was humbling, during the by-election, to go to door after door and meet people on whose behalf Robin had intervened, or people who had met him or seen him at gala days.
	Before the election in May, we estimated that Robin had been involved with more than 40,000 constituents and their families in the Livingston area in his relatively short time as an MP there. He once told me that he had met many, many wealthy people in his life and that he had been to many wealthy places, but that he had never encountered the wealth of community that so much prevailed in many parts of the constituency, which I now have the great honour to represent.
	One member of staff used to call us the odd couple. Right hon. and hon. Members might remember the film of the same name. There were two central characters: one was a witty, charismatic individual who played a mean hand of poker; the other was an obsessive individual who would rewrite his introductory leaflet 27 times to ensure that there were no split infinitives. Well, the odd couple are no more, and I will miss him terribly. His tragic death on 5 August is not just a loss to this place but a great loss to the constituency of Livingston and to West Lothian. Robin and I were not only close personally but politically. On the major issues of the day—apart from proportional representation—whether full employment, social inclusion, dignity for our pensioners or Iraq, we were as one.
	I have the great honour to represent in this place the village and the community in which I was born and brought up. Prior to becoming a full-time union official with the Confederation of Health Service Employees, I worked in primary care psychiatry, which I recognise is a skill that could be of use in this place. It was a pleasure, during the by-election, to meet one of my constituents, who, when I asked if she was voting Labour, told me that, in the past, she had always voted for the Scottish National party, but this time she would vote for Labour, because I used to work in the health centre, and when her man was "off his heid", I was "the man who came up and jagged him and made him better." Not many right hon. and hon. Members will have had such an endorsement from their constituency. Gregor Poynton, who was working hard on my campaign, chapped a door on the night before the by-election, and said to a man who came to the door, "Would you like to meet Jim Devine, the Labour party candidate?" The man said to him, "I'm sorry, mate, there's nobody in." It is a unique constituency.
	In fact, the constituency is the fastest growing part of Scotland. The new town of Livingston was established in 1965. We have a football team in the Scottish premier league. Sadly, it is propping up the premier league at the moment, but we will not be following our friends to the east and sacking our manager. I am sure that we will be moving up the league very quickly.
	I have famous, great predecessors—not only Robin but Tam Dalyell, the former Father of the House, represented my constituency, as did Mannie Shinwell. Probably our greatest claim to fame, however, is the work of James "Paraffin" Young, who in Addiewell in 1866 delivered the first shale mine, and extracted oil from shale for the very first time. I can therefore proudly boast that I am the Member with the first oilfield in the world in his constituency.
	I have a variety of interests. I hope that this place follows the lead of the Scottish Parliament and the Irish Dail in banning smoking in public places. That will make a major contribution, not just to the well-being of individuals and bar staff but to the population as a whole. I have a particular interest, as a former full-time union official with Unison, in industrial relations. I want to share with this place a modern, industrial relations practice model in which I was involved within the Scottish health service—Partnership Working. Partnership working and staff governance were given the same legal status as clinical and financial governance. I also want to participate in the campaign by ASLEF to get freight off our roads and on to rail.
	I was warned, however, that one of the things that I would have to do is refer to this debate, and I am obviously happy to do so. The turnout for the by-election in which I was elected was 38 per cent. The turnout in another by-election in Scotland that day was 32 per cent. Not too long ago, if a constituency delivered less than 70 per cent. in a by-election or in a general election, questions would be asked. This is not just a Scottish problem. The very able Scottish journalist, Ian McWhitter, pointed out in an article recently that in Leeds in 1999, the turnout was 19 per cent., in Tottenham in 2000, the turnout was 25 per cent., and in Kensington and Chelsea in 1999, the turnout was 29 per cent. It is not a Scottish problem, a rich problem, a poor problem, a Tory problem or a Labour problem. It is a problem for all of us collectively.
	I have ideas on how we should improve turnout. From my experience in the by-election, one idea is about political honesty and political debate. I had to deal with the party of independence that would discuss everything bar independence. The Liberal Democrats launched a petition in the by-election against the closure of the local hospital. The local hospital, St. John's, is not under threat and will not close—I can give assurances to the Liberal Democrats on that. What was striking about their campaign was that they blamed the Scottish Executive for causing the closure—a Scottish Executive of which they are a member. This dishonesty alienates voters, and that is why people do not participate in the political process.
	We must all learn from one another. I see my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr. Murphy) sitting on the Front Bench. One of my colleagues, who lives in his constituency, tells me that if he raises a complaint with him, he ends up with 12 letters, six phone calls and three visits. When I shared that information last night with my hon. Friend, he told me that that was false—it is 24 letters, 12 phone calls and six visits.
	As I said at the start of my speech, being in this place is a great honour. I am very proud that my constituents elected me here. I recognise that I have big shoes to fill, and I hope that I can do so.

David Heath: May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine), who made a remarkably fluent and assured maiden speech? He is absolutely right that his predecessor, Robin Cook, can only be described as a great parliamentarian, whom many of us will miss as a colleague and friend. It is a difficult to act to follow, which he appreciates, but he has made a very good start. I just hope for his sake that the hospital is still open in four years' time—many are not.
	I have no illusions that there may be contained excitement outside this place about our proceedings this evening, but the Bill is extremely important. It deals with a critical element of our democracy—our voting system. I welcome the Bill. It is a modest Bill, which has gross omissions that I shall seek to point out, but what it does contain is welcome. I must say to the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) that I am amazed that even the modern, opportunistic Conservative party can find any reason to decline to give a Second Reading to a Bill that contains measures that we all want introduced, and to deprive Parliament of the vehicle for further such measures. It is tactical mistake. I hope that he will reconsider that position later, as it is important that we move forward as a united House as far as possible in seeking to reduce fraud and maintain the integrity of the voting system.

David Heath: I agree with the last contention. I welcomed a couple of suggestions made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) about how we might increase registration and participation.
	As for experiments of the kind that we saw at the time of the European elections, I have no problem with the use of novel forms of voting provided that measures to combat fraud are in place beforehand. The difficulty—which we pointed out repeatedly to the Government at the time—was that while they wanted to increase turnout, they were not prepared to establish measures to maintain the integrity of the ballot.
	The Birmingham judgments, with which Members will be familiar, do not relate directly to those elections, but they are damning. A senior judge, Richard Mawrey, quoted the Government in his obiter dicta:
	"There are no proposals to change the rules governing election procedures for the next election, including those for postal voting. The systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working."
	What complacency on the Government's part, in the face of clear evidence that the systems were not working. Richard Mawrey commented:
	"Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find this statement surprising. To assert that 'the systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working' indicates a state not simply of complacency but of denial."
	I believe that, at that point, the Government were in denial, but I welcome the Minister of State's current view. She has clearly distanced herself from the earlier position, and we are making progress.
	There are omissions from the Bill. The big one is the issue of personal identifiers and individual registration—in fact, two issues which, although not identical, are related. Here we come to the question of balance. What personal identifiers are appropriate to deter fraudsters, while not tipping the balance by reducing the incidence of registration or voting? That is the crucial equilibrium that we must achieve.
	I believe that the Government have fallen on one side of that balance. We will seek to persuade them in Committee, but they have not yet been prepared to accept the wider palette of personal identifiers to reduce fraud. I believe that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire has fallen on the other side, because I do not believe that national insurance numbers constitute a good personal identifier. I think that such an arrangement would deter many people. I frankly admit that I do not know my national insurance number. If I were asked to give it, I would not be able to, and I think that many others are in the same position. I know of no bank or financial institution that uses national insurance numbers as a personal identifier. Moreover, we know that national insurance numbers are occasionally duplicated, that—as the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire accepted—they are sometimes retained after a person is deceased, and that they are known by people other than those to whom they belong. Employers, for example, know the insurance numbers of their employees—although they probably do not know their mothers' maiden names, or other identifiers that are used on the telephone by people contacting their banks.
	What I do accept is that we need to do better than we are doing now. I see the Government edging towards a conclusion that I consider inescapable: that we need personal identifiers, especially in the case of postal ballots when people do not present themselves at polling stations in person.

David Heath: No. I am aware that I have taken up the time of other Members who want to make speeches.
	Let us deal with this issue to a sensible time scale, and on a scale that provides us with the results that the Government apparently want. That is the right way forward, as I shall try to persuade the Government in Committee.
	The Government have got themselves in a terrible mess on the issue of the expenses period. A four-month period for election expenses running before a fixed-term election is fine, because everybody knows where they stand. Of course, it is true that we always assume that county council elections will fall on the same date every four years, because that has been the pattern over the past few years, but the fact remains that having such a four-month period before an election whose date has yet to be determined gives rise to all sorts of problems.
	I say candidly to the Government that if they really want this provision to work, they must increase the limit to allow for a full four-month campaign during the election period, rather than a one-month campaign. But doing so will raise the threshold to the point where the process will be open to the abuse that we are theoretically trying to reduce. Doing so will increase instances of abuse of the kind that we used to have—instances of the old formulations being used to enable people to pretend that they are not candidates, when everyone knows perfectly well that they are. It would be much more sensible to revisit this matter and to consider the consequences.
	I now want to say something that some Members will not find so conducive. In this context, we also need to look at central parties' spending in local constituencies. A great deal of abuse is going on in this regard—on the part, let me say, of all the parties represented in this House. In constituencies that are considered marginal, a welter of general election literature from political parties that is "off record" so far as election expenses are concerned is addressed individually to electors and put through their doors. That is nonsense and an abuse of the process, and it should not happen. It is not difficult to identify instances where election literature is directly addressed to an individual elector in a particular constituency. Such literature must surely count as an election expense.
	I want also to consider the change in the deposit threshold. I accept that this issue gives cause for concern, but I do not take quite so strong a view as the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire because, in my view, the deposit is not the right way to eliminate fringe candidates. A financial barrier is not the right way to restrict access to the poll. A far better idea is to change the number of assenters, so as to require a demonstration of popular support in a constituency before entering the poll, rather than using the financial constraint of a deposit. We do need to consider this issue.
	I welcome some of the new offences included in the Bill. We could go further by, for instance, preventing completed postal vote forms from falling into hands other than those of electors or returning officers. I welcome the co-ordinated online record of electors—the electronic register—and, I think, the performance standards, although I hope that they will not become over-prescriptive tick boxes. I hope that the Electoral Commission will seek, rather, to give guidelines and to audit the performance of electoral officers, rather than providing yet another system of targets. Moreover, the situation regarding imprints is still a mess, and I shall hope to improve it as the Bill progresses.
	May we also please do something about the Post Office authorities' inappropriate influence in deciding what goes into a freepost leaflet? It is not for the Post Office to decide what we put in our leaflets. It is perhaps part of its job to refer something that it believes to be against election rules to the Electoral Commission, but it is not for the postmaster to decide what is appropriate for electors of X constituency to receive from candidates in an election.
	I finish on small point that is none the less important to Members. The Government are being cautious in doing something about the anomaly of the duplication involved in providing evidence of donations both to the Electoral Commission—as a result of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—and to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, whom we employ to deal with such matters. The Government should not feel such concern, because it is sensible to eliminate this duplication. Let the Electoral Commission have access to and audit our Register of Members' Interests, and let it be able to call in the commissioner for questioning, but let us not have this silly duplication.
	If we all feel this way, we should not worry about what some splenetic tabloid writer may say about us weakening our standards. Eliminating this duplication would not weaken them—we know that, the Electoral Commission knows that and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards knows that. This would be a sensible and small improvement that would be welcomed by the Standards and Privileges Committee, on which I used to serve.

Anne Begg: I will address most of my remarks to the issue of ensuring that disabled people have full access to the democratic process, but before doing so, I want to point out that there are a number of things about the Bill that I welcome. I am thinking in particular of some of the changes to postal voting, following the problems faced by those whose postal votes did not arrive. On the day of the 2005 general election, a Scottish Mirror headline read, "The election: postal ballot scandal—probe launched into vote rigging in Aberdeen". As the Labour candidate for Aberdeen, South, fighting a very tight marginal, one can imagine the trepidation with which I read that headline. Stating that a special probe into "postal voting irregularities" had been launched in Aberdeen, the article continued:
	"Six people turned up to vote in the key marginal seat of Aberdeen, South, held by Labour's Ann Begg, only to be told that they had been registered as postal voters. Another six complained to election staff after failing to get postal voting papers they had applied for."
	That story meant that the local registration officer launched an inquiry to establish what had happened. In the scheme of things, 12 votes going amiss is not perhaps a huge problem, but what happened to those individuals might well have been replicated across the whole country.
	In some cases, people had forgotten that they had applied for a postal vote by ticking the form in the previous October. In some cases, they did not tick the form because of household registration: perhaps the head of household had decided that his whole family should apply for a postal vote. When the postal vote did not arrive, they were none the wiser and did not find out that they had a postal vote until they arrived at the polling station. It often did not dawn on those who did know that they had applied for a postal vote that they had not seen it until the day before the election. Only then did they wonder where it had gone. In all those cases, people turned up at the polling station but were not allowed to register their votes. At that stage, they were disenfranchised and there was no way that they could register a vote in the hope that it could be checked at some time in the future. That is why I welcome two measures in the Bill—the marked postal vote register and the tendered voting system—and I hope that they will answer the concerns that were raised in my constituency during the election.
	I want to make a point on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna), who unfortunately cannot be present today. She found that 500 votes in her constituency were discounted on account of a clerical error. It appears that the officer in one particular polling station had, instead of writing the polling number on the counterfoil, written it on the ballot form itself. That made it possible at the count to identify whose ballot papers they were, so 500 were discounted. My hon. Friend is looking for an assurance that the Bill will make provision to correct what was obviously a clerical error. The voting intentions in all those cases were perfectly clear and I am glad that that did not happen in my constituency. With a majority of 1,300, that could have been very worrying. In many constituencies, 500 votes can be the difference between winning and losing.
	It is important for people to have the right to vote in a range of different ways. I do not agree with tightening up access to postal votes, as the expansion of such votes has been a great advance, improving the access of elderly people and people with disabilities to the democratic process. However, the postal vote is not a panacea and should not be viewed as an either/or. Some people with disabilities will want to go and vote in person, while for others, postal voting may present as many barriers as going to vote in person.
	I hope that the Bill will start to make access to voting much easier and my major plea is for consistency. It would appear that, on account of having different registration officers in different areas, there is little central guidance, which can result in different advice being given out to different polling clerks in different areas. It can even result in differences in the literature that is produced in different areas. For instance, one of my constituents did not realise that they should have received a postal vote until they turned up at the polling station because the polling card did not mention that a postal vote had been applied for. In areas such as Westminster—where I am also on the electoral register, as are other hon. Members—I know that polling cards did indicate that a postal vote had been allocated. Something as simple as the information on the polling card can help to inform people about exactly what they have signed up for.
	Now that it is possible to apply for a postal vote for life, it is easy for people to forget from one election to another that they have already applied, leading to a duplication of applications for postal votes. As soon as an election is called, all the political parties start throwing leaflets through people's doors encouraging them to apply for a postal vote, resulting in people applying when they already have one. That is bound to increase the work load at a busy time for electoral registration officers. It is important to make their lives as easy as possible.
	My plea for consistency also applies to what we mean by an accessible polling station. When I talk about access, I am not just talking about physical access. We tend to think of people in wheelchairs requiring physical access, which is, of course, important. I want to be able to get into all the polling stations in my constituency. This time, when my constituency had expanded by three wards, I discovered a polling station that I could not get into on polling day. I turned up to be faced with six steps. As a candidate, I wanted to go in and visit the polling station, but I found that in order to do so, the polling clerk would have to leave their position to go to open the back door to let me in—but how did I get to him to tell him to do that in the first place? That problem is not uncommon. There is often a big sign outside, saying "to gain access, please alert the polling clerk inside".
	Disabled people want to vote on their own as well. Gaining physical access is important, and it is not just about sticking in a one-in-10 ramp over six steps. It can be quite daunting to see something that looks like the north face of the Eiger. There must be a proper ramp, which is not just a temporary expedient, but permanent and stable. Access for people with visual impairment may require a Braille template or large print to be in place.
	Scope's "Polls Apart 4" report—so called because it is the fourth election in which the organisation carried out a survey of the accessibility of polling stations—caused considerable concern. I had thought that, at last, things would be a lot better. However, the Scope survey discovered that 68 per cent. of polling stations at the 2005 election did not meet every single one of the accessibility criteria. About 60 per cent. had flat access so that people in wheelchairs could get in, but other concerns had been forgotten about, so the polling stations did not meet all the accessibility criteria.
	The report also found that in 63 per cent. of cases there were problems and barriers to postal voting, too. That shows that postal voting is not necessarily the answer to the problem of lack of physical access to a polling station. Too often, it has been expressed to me as an excuse that I can always vote by post. If the post box is not accessible or it is difficult for people living alone to find someone to countersign the ballot, postal voting cannot provide the answer. Postal voting is an alternative and it can make life easier for many disabled people, but it does not provide the whole answer. As a candidate, I certainly want to be able to visit all the polling stations in my constituency. Disabled groups are very keen that personal identifiers should be introduced. They are not so sure about piloting the scheme, but this debate has made me understand why the Government want that to happen. They also have some concerns about what happens in care homes, and who is responsible for filling in the registration forms and encouraging people to vote.
	My time will run out soon, but I have a couple more things to say. First, I hope that the proxy vote will be retained. It is very important in constituencies such as mine, where many people work offshore. Postal voting does not always work for them, as they do not necessarily come home in the period between the day that an election is called and polling day. Proxy votes are also very important for people who work abroad—for instance, many of my constituents work in the middle east.
	Finally, I am very glad that candidates are to be allowed their common names. When I first stood for election, I had to use the name Margaret A. Begg—the one that appears on the electoral register—even though everyone knows me as Anne Begg. The change proposed in the Bill is crucial for allowing people to identify candidates.

Patrick Cormack: I am sure that the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) has commanded a lot of support for her speech. She speaks from experience and with authority, especially on the difficulties faced by people with disabilities, and I am sure that the Minister of State and the rest of the House will have listened to her with great sympathy.
	The House also listened with great admiration to the speech by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine). He has popped out of the Chamber for a moment, but he spoke with great fluency and real commitment, and I am sure that he will become a valuable Member of the House. However, I must join him in regretting the reason for his presence—the terrible tragedy last August that took away one of the most consummate parliamentarians of the age.
	I feel the loss particularly strongly. Robin Cook was one of the first people I saw on my delayed return to the House, and he greeted me very warmly. He said that something had to be done about the problem that I had faced, and that he would help me. Indeed, his name appears on the face of the private Member's Bill that I introduced on 6 July, as one of its sponsors.
	In that context, I am grateful for the help given to me by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who opened the debate for the Opposition today. However, I am particularly grateful for the help given by the Minister of State and her officials. She was faced with a dilemma: she was sympathetic to my Bill but had to decide whether to support it, as every private Member's Bill is somewhat deficient in drafting. The alternative was to tack my proposals on to this Government Bill.
	The Minister of State discussed the matter with me, and I readily accepted her preferred solution. She proposed that I should seek leave to introduce amendments during the Committee stage on the Floor of the House that, in effect, would incorporate the main points of my Bill into the Government's proposals.
	Given the help that I have received, I am afraid that I shall not support the Opposition's reasoned amendment later tonight. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire will fully understand that that is because I want to see this Bill, imperfect as it might be, on the statute book. In this matter, I take the line adopted by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). He and my hon. Friend made several points—for example, about deposits and voting rights for prisoners—with which I agree entirely. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman about the length of the campaign, but nevertheless, this is a Bill that can be improved in Committee as long as it is approached in a consensual way by hon. Members of all parties.
	I want to concentrate on the matter that caused me so much concern and which delayed my return to the House. I do not speak in any sense selfishly, as I would not want any hon. Member, of any party, to have to go through what I went through. Tragically, my Liberal Democrat opponent in my constituency died on the Saturday before polling day. Friends in the Liberal Democrat party, both locally and nationally, wondered whether they could help, but there was nothing that anybody could do to accelerate the process.
	As a result, we had to wait seven weeks to hold the election. My constituents were disenfranchised for all that time. For South Staffordshire, that was something of an inconvenience, and for me it was a frustration. However, if the delay had affected Mr. Speaker, for instance, he could not have been elected to the Chair. If it had affected the Prime Minister, he could not have addressed the House on the day of the Queen's Speech. Indeed, given that the Labour party constitution states that the leader of the party must be a Member of Parliament, it is arguable whether he could have remained Prime Minister.
	Another matter that must be borne in mind is that this is an age when people campaign in some rather strange ways. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that a person campaigning on a euthanasia ticket might deliberately take his or her own life, or that a terrorist might do likewise. As it is stands, the law allows a person to stand in as many constituencies as he or she can find the deposits and the names for.
	On 6 July, I referred on the Floor of the House to the case of the lady who stood in all four Cardiff seats. She picked up fewer than 400 votes in all, and in one seat registered only one vote—presumably her own. However, if she had died, whether tragically or deliberately, there would have been no representation in that city.
	I remember the elections in February and October 1974. If something similar had happened then, the Government of the day could have been in doubt. The House might also cast its mind back to what happened in Germany recently. That election shows that such difficulties can be dealt with much more expeditiously than is possible for us at present. The death of a candidate in Dresden delayed the election there for two weeks, compared with the seven weeks here. Therefore, I shall introduce amendments to the Bill that will attempt to address the question of delay.
	I shall also table an amendment that would prevent a delay if an independent candidate in an election were to die. After all, the Prime Minister had many independent candidates standing against him. Independent candidates are sui generis, by definition, and there is no replacement if one dies. I am delighted to say that the Government have accepted the force of that argument.

Patrick Cormack: I have just made that point, and I am glad to have it endorsed.
	The Minister of State did not agree with me on one point, and I accept her argument. I wanted some threshold to be established for smaller parties, but she and the Electoral Commission were very uneasy about defining the differences between genuine parties and ones that are less genuine. In parenthesis, however, I think that she really ought to think again about the question of the deposit. A proliferation of candidates from fringe parties could create a problem that she and I would prefer to avoid. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire made some telling points in advancing the argument on that issue.
	The Minister of State agrees with me that nominations should not reopen for new candidates. The difficulties that I experienced happened during a general election, not a by-election, so I did not cease to be a Member of Parliament. When a general election vote is delayed in such circumstances, the poll that is finally held should replicate the general election as far as possible. However, the law as it stands allowed the Labour party to substitute a candidate.
	I make no personal criticism of that, as the lady in question had very good reasons for standing down, but the same mechanism could be used to shoehorn into a constituency high-profile people who had lost elsewhere.
	Equally there were three other fringe candidates who had not signified their desire to fight in the general election who suddenly appeared on the scene. I do not think that that is right. Some people have tried to argue that everything should open again, but it should not. It is the general election. Everyone has the right to decide whether to contest a particular constituency, and if they decide to do so, they should still stand in any delayed general election. However, if they want to withdraw, they must convince the returning officer that they have a very good reason to do so. They are not substituted. In this instance I think that the Minister of State has strengthened the provision that I included in my Bill.
	I am delighted that the Minister has accepted the need to tackle the problem of multiple candidatures. We live in an age that is very different from that of which we are reminded at the beginning of every state opening when the Speaker says that all of those elected for more than one constituency must hereby declare which one they wish to represent, or words to that effect. That is one of the first things that is said at the beginning of a new Parliament.
	We all know that the days of hedging bets by standing for a second constituency, as some illustrious people in the past did, have long gone. Nowadays, multiple candidature is used by the maverick or eccentric candidate. So we are not limiting the right of any man or any women to stand in any constituency of his or her choice. We are merely saying, "Make your choice and stand in that constituency, not in a dozen others."
	Imagine the mayhem that could be caused, deliberately or accidentally, if someone decided to stand against every member of the Cabinet or every member of the shadow Cabinet, and then died or killed himself. We would suddenly have constitutional mayhem. However, we can relax because my experience was merely an inconvenience for me and my constituents, but it could have precipitated a constitutional crisis, especially if the result of the election had been much closer than it was.
	I think that my experience has highlighted some bad law. I am grateful to the Minister for the way in which she has responded. I am grateful also to all those Members in all parts of the House who agreed to sponsor my Bill, including the Leader of the Democratic Unionist party, the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley), and three very senior Liberal Democrats. When I come to move my amendments, I will have drafted them with the help that has been offered by the Minister. I hope that they will be accepted by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. I hope also that when the next general election comes, whenever that might be, there will be no Member who will have to go through what I and the electors of South Staffordshire had to experience on 23 June, or in waiting for 23 June. I appeal for help when I move my amendments. I hope that many members will sign up to them.

Chris Ruane: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine), who achieved a good balance between a moving maiden speech and a very funny maiden speech.
	I welcome the Bill. It is a good measure that achieves the right balance between widening the participation and securing the vote. Before the Bill was published, I felt that there was a danger of over-emphasis being placed on securing the vote. I am pleased that that is not the case. Newspapers were full of articles about postal ballot fraud and Ministers were questioned at the Dispatch Box on the issue of electoral fraud. Of course, electoral fraud, including postal ballot fraud, is a serious issue, but we must have regard to the statistics. I tabled a written question, No. 10802, on 14 July. I asked the Minister how many successful prosecutions there had been for postal ballot fraud, at parliamentary and local government level, over recent years. I was told that there had been none at parliamentary level and about one or two a year for local government elections.
	Surely the greater evil is to have 3 million to 4 million missing or unregistered electors—figures revealed by the Electoral Commission in September. I welcome the commission's research. If I have any criticism of it, it is that the research was not conducted three or four years ago when many Members, certainly on the Government Benches, were raising concerns about under-registration. Had that research taken place at that time, perhaps the newspapers would have been full of what I say is a greater injustice—3 million to 4 million missing electors.

Andrew Tyrie: I get the impression that the Government came to power full of great ideas for reforming and improving the electoral system, but so far there has not been much progress—or at least only in limited areas.
	The Government have already introduced two major changes to the electoral system and the Bill will bring a third. The first change was the introduction of rolling registration, which as far as we can tell has gone reasonably well, although people have said that it may enable bogus voters to stay on the register indefinitely.
	The second change was the relaxation of access to postal voting, which was a disaster. The details of the Birmingham case and everything that accompanied it— the so-called warehousing problems—need not detain us. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) read part of the judgment and it was absolutely right, as was the judge. The Government and the Electoral Commission between them really mucked it up. They failed the first and overriding test of any reform in this field—to maintain confidence in the system.
	The credibility of the electoral system has taken a severe knock among a large section of the electorate. It is paramount in any democracy that people should believe that the electoral system is fair and acceptable and not subject to fraud. The Government make a number of proposals in the Bill to try to prevent such things from happening again. One proposal is to create a new offence of falsely applying for a postal vote. I am no lawyer, but I am not yet convinced of the need for that offence. The people who engaged in the so-called warehousing in Birmingham knew very well that they were committing an offence. The new offence seems to have the smell of "display purpose only" legislation, of which we have had so much in the past few years, adding to the statute book but perhaps not to the effectiveness of the law.
	Of course the third major change to registration, which is a major part of the Bill, is the switch from household to individual registration. Frankly, I cannot tell whether the Government intend to introduce personal identifiers and keep the household system going, or whether they really intend to move to a truly individual registration system eventually. I was still not clear on that, even after the Minister had introduced the Bill. What is worse is that the Government clearly want one thing, a halfway house, while the Electoral Commission wants another—it wants the Bill to go the whole hog right at the start. I certainly have the impression that the Government are dragging their feet on the Electoral Commission's original proposals.
	I am sceptical that the integrity of the electoral system will be seen to improve much with the Government's halfway house. I would not have rushed to adopt individual registration, but I am beginning to warm to it now that I have heard the argument tonight. The Electoral Commission, of course, wants a truly individual registration system. It believes that such a system is now a vital part of restoring credibility in the system after the postal voting farrago. Sam Younger makes that clear in the briefing letter that, I think, was sent to all MPs, when he says, "Without individual registration", by which he means the fully fledged system,
	"it is hard to see how the very real concerns . . . about the security of the postal voting system can be properly addressed."
	We have had an experiment with postal voting. It has gone wrong, and to patch it up we are about to embark on another experiment, with the Electoral Commission pulling one way and the Government another. The fact they are already arguing about that pretty much in public does not make me very optimistic about success.
	Why do we need to take such risks with something as important as the credibility of the electoral system, which was already working reasonably well before the reforms began? We have heard some of the answers from those on the Front Bench. Of course, the main answer given is that a good number of people—in particular, the Government—convinced themselves that the old system was not working.
	Whenever we have these debates we tend to hear quite a lot about how voter participation is in sharp decline, about fears of voter apathy and, as a consequence, of great dangers to democracy and the like. Of course our system is imperfect, but as I have already intimated, the greater risk may lie with half-baked changes that can further erode the electorate's confidence in the system. In any case, I am not convinced that the electoral system is in such a terrible mess. I think that the doomsters have largely got it wrong.
	No amount of meddling with the electoral system will dramatically increase turnout. That will come when the electorate go into an election very uncertain of the result. I do not think that they did so at the last election, and they certainly did not in the 2001 election when the turnout was very low. When the outcome was uncertain and two parties were arguing vigorously, with very different policy stances, we had one of the highest turnouts ever seen in this country, as recently as 1992. I do not think that the country has suddenly gone into a paroxysm of apathy since then, and the case is greatly overstated that voter apathy and problems of participation have increased massively—but perhaps we should debate that wider issue more deeply another day.
	Wherever the Government have introduced such proposals, whenever they have travelled down the road of electoral reform, we seem to be given further evidence of the law of unintended consequences, and I fear that the Bill will be more of the same.—[Interruption.] The Minister is saying something from a sedentary position that I cannot hear, I am afraid. She is welcome to intervene if she wants to.

Andrew Love: Like other hon. Members, I begin by paying a warm tribute to my hon. Friend the new Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine), who is not in his seat at present. He gave a very good account of himself this evening.
	The Bill is important not least because it begins to deal with legislation that dates back to as early as 1872. I hope that it will bring it up to 21st century standards, but I want to focus on my experience in a London constituency. At the general election, I went down streets in my constituency where one in every two households had no one on the register. There were polling districts in which 30 per cent. of the electorate were missing from the register. We have a registration crisis, especially in London, although the problem exists all over the country. Between 3.5 million and 4 million electors are missing nationally—between 8 and 9 per cent. of the electorate.
	House of Commons researchers estimate that, in 2001, 5,400 electors were missing from the register in my constituency, but that by 2004 another 3,500 could have been added to the total. A comparison of the electoral register for 2003 with census figures for 2001 shows that 9,600 people were missing from the register. As I said, 21 out of the 25 constituencies with the most people missing from the register are in Greater London. The crisis in registration must be a priority, especially for the Bill.
	Sadly, I do not think that the problem has been shared with the Electoral Commission. Although most of the Bill's provisions have resulted from various reports and research carried out by the Electoral Commission, little research has been done on registration itself. The focus of the commission's activities in recent months has been individual registration. We might want to move to individual registration, but we have limited experience of it so far. Much of our experience comes from Northern Ireland, where the proportion of the electorate on the register fell to 84 per cent. It was only when the electoral officer of Northern Ireland disagreed with the Electoral Commission that the figure was boosted to 94 per cent.
	The thing that surprises me most is that of the duties that Parliament has asked the Electoral Commission to undertake on our behalf, its third is to encourage greater participation in elections. I know that a balance must be struck between individual registration and not erecting hurdles that will reduce registration, but I submit that the Electoral Commission has simply got its priorities wrong. We have a democratic deficit in this country stretching to 3.5 million electors—some 7,000 in my constituency, if we take that as the average figure—so we need to comment when the Electoral Commission, which is supposed to be accountable to Parliament, appears to ignore it. The Electoral Commission has a duty to report to Parliament through the Speaker's Committee, so I urge those who will next review its five-year plan to examine carefully whether the commission is getting its priorities right. I believe that if the commission were doing that, it would be paying far greater attention to the registration process and to how we can get more people on the register.
	We could do several things to increase registration. Although I shall mention other matters, if we are honest about the balance of all the issues with which the Bill deals, registration must be our priority. First, electoral registration officers must have access to all information that can assist the registration process. In 2004, a statutory instrument was passed to help the process. It clarified the fact that officers may access registers for council tax, council rent and housing benefit, as is right and proper. However, my local electoral registration officer tells me that the information on local authority registers often does not give officers the precise information that would be of most benefit to them.
	I suggest, therefore, that we consider extending the information available to electoral registration officers, much of which will be on national registers. For example, we could consider using information from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Land Registry. We could even—dare I say it?—use information from TV Licensing because we know that 98 per cent. of all households have a television. I understand that under data protection rules such information might not be made available, but we could use other mechanisms and work with those organisations to communicate to people the need for registration if they are to vote at local and general elections.
	Secondly, we need a properly resourced electoral registration service. It was said earlier that we no longer see properly qualified electoral registration staff. Electoral registration staff in my local authority area, who have been working with the same funding for the past 10 years, carry out a canvass each year. Hon. Members will thus understand that the extent to which the canvass is comprehensive has declined somewhat over those 10 years. That is not the only problem, however, because under a process called adverse selection canvassing takes place in areas where electoral registration is already high, but areas where registration is low are not canvassed. When one asks why, one is told that canvassers find it difficult to canvass in those areas. We must examine carefully the way in which registration is conducted.
	The Electoral Commission has done a good job on this issue because it has researched the prevalence of non-registration. It has identified three groups in particular that do not register for elections, so with a bit of advice and support we could target those groups and get them on the register.
	Thirdly, electoral registration departments almost always act on their own. They are almost always ignored by their local authorities and there is no national mechanism to bring them into any sort of process. Performance standards are an important mechanism through which the Electoral Commission can assure local people that their departments perform their functions properly, but we must also ensure that the departments are given the best advice. We should allow them to come together to talk about how that advice could be used throughout the country to improve the process. We must, of course, ensure that expenditure on electoral registration is transparent. The Bill will make additional money available for the electoral registration process, but I would like an assurance that it will get through to electoral registration officers because that has always been a problem.
	I understand that I have only a few moments left in which to speak, but I want to comment on the important issues of corruption and individual registration. I certainly do not underestimate the need for change and greater security. It is clear that the greatest focus has been on personation and vote rigging. We heard earlier about the situation in Blackburn and Birmingham. Genuine difficulties must be addressed and we should not underestimate them. Labour Members have pointed out that the extent of electoral fraud is not as great as that which is sometimes reflected in our national media, but we should all be worried about any such fraud. However, the Bill addresses the issue, especially in postal voting, where most of the problems have arisen.
	We must acknowledge the important contribution that postal voting has made to increasing participation in elections. At the 2005 general election, 12 per cent. of the electorate registered for postal votes, accounting for 14.5 per cent. of the votes that were cast. We certainly do not want to lose such an important contribution.
	The Bill introduces four measures that will help to improve security. As has already been said, there is a new offence of falsely applying for a postal vote, which will deal with some of the problems that arose in Birmingham. The use of personal identifiers, particularly someone's signature, is important. Undue influence, a major factor in recent cases, will become an offence, as will providing false information. All those measures should satisfy people that we are beginning to make voting much more secure. I believe that surveys should be conducted as well, but overall the Bill is an excellent measure that should be warmly welcomed by the House.

Roger Godsiff: I generally welcome the Bill, but I am concerned about some provisions. I am pleased that the Government are moving towards individual registration through the use of personal identifiers. The use of an identifying signature is important, particularly for postal voting. I am pleased that the Government are not rushing ahead with their proposals, and will use pilot schemes. They have been criticised, with some justification, for proceeding too fast in previous schemes, so it is right and proper that they are proceeding with their current proposals step by step. I welcome the fact that, for the first time, returning officers will be obliged to maintain a marked register of postal voters. Some Members have spoken about postal voting in Birmingham, but if the electoral registration officer there had not voluntarily maintained a marked register of postal votes, the fraud would not have come to light.
	I am concerned about the proposal that independent candidates should be allowed six words to describe their stance. In Wales, such candidates can use Welsh. My constituency is multi-cultural and has a Muslim majority. Can such a description be given in Punjabi or Urdu? There will be provisions to prevent an abuse of the description, and a candidate may not use what is said to be a collective term. I can imagine that if, at the last general election, there had been the opportunity to use six words, candidates in certain constituencies would have described themselves as "supporter of anti-Iraq war campaign". I am not sure that is a good way of moving democracy forward.
	The provision to reduce the threshold for the deposit to 2 per cent. is not a positive step. It will encourage publicity seekers. I know of many restaurant owners in the Balti sector of my constituency who would happily pay £500 for the right to advertise themselves as the owner of such-and-such a restaurant in so-and-so road.
	As regards independent observers in polling stations, I make the same point as I made before. I am not sure what their role will be, but it will be greatly diminished in a multicultural constituency such as mine if they cannot speak Urdu or Punjabi.
	I return to the subject of campaigning outside polling stations, which I raised in the debate on the integrity of the electoral system on 22 June. I pointed out what occurs in the real world of my constituency and other multicultural constituencies. In the past, it was a convention among political parties and candidates that there would be no campaigning outside polling stations, loudspeaker vans would not be parked outside polling stations, loudspeakers would be turned off as soon as they got within the vicinity, the tellers taking numbers would exchange information among the various parties, and there would be a great deal of conviviality. That may still happen in some areas of the country, but it is certainly not what happens in inner-city Birmingham, and I suspect it is not what happens in a number of other multicultural inner city areas.
	On election day in Birmingham, people congregate at the entrance to polling stations. They hand out leaflets and give out a great deal of misinformation, particularly to voters whose first language is not English and for whom the number is more important than the name on the ballot paper. Over the course of the day, the numbers increase, so that by early evening there could be 50 or 60 people campaigning outside the polling station gates. In addition, there are cars parked outside polling stations or close by, with continuous messages being played in English, Punjabi and Urdu, so that people going to vote have to run a gauntlet of campaigners giving out leaflets, misinformation, peer pressure, and subliminal messages being churned out over and over again by loudspeaker vans.
	When I highlighted the problem in the debate on 22 June, the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, who is not present, said that she appreciated what was said and that the Government "are genuinely consulting". I do not know what consultation has taken place, but there is nothing in the Bill that addresses the problem. It is not a problem that will go away; indeed, it will get worse. The police are placed in an impossible position. They know what is going on but they can do nothing about it. It is no good saying that section 115 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 covers the situation. It does not. That section refers to attempts to stop someone voting. The people who operate outside a polling station are not trying to stop people voting. They are trying to influence how they vote. The Bill does not deal with the issue.
	Clause 37 has a stab at resolving the problem. It extends the current definition by making it an offence to attempt to prevent an elector from exercising the franchise, even if the attempt is unsuccessful. I do not know what that means. I say again that people do not stand around outside a polling station for hours on end in order to get a suntan. They stand there because they know of the influence that that can have on electors, particularly vulnerable electors whose main language is Urdu or Punjabi.
	It could be said that the police should deal with the matter, but they have other rather important tasks. There is often a policeman inside a polling station, but not outside. The police do not have the resources. In any event, unless the policeman spoke Urdu or Punjabi, how on earth would he know if somebody was being threatened, intimidated or pressurised?

Hywel Williams: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which I shall address in a moment.
	The allowance includes six words in Welsh and six words in English. My compatriots have a reputation for being verbose and using three words where one word will do in English, and the extra space recognises the reality and the normality in Wales of bilingualism. Again, I am not speaking only on behalf of my party. In Welsh, my party's title is Plaid Cymru, and in English it is the party of Wales, which makes six words, so we do not require 12 words. The Conservative party is Y Blaid Geidwadol, which again makes six words. However, the Wales Labour party is Y Blaid Lafur Gymreig, which makes eight words, and the Liberal Democrat party is Y Blaid Ryddfrydol Democrataidd. The Bill will allow those two parties to print their full titles in both Welsh and English, which is welcome.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) has referred to the situation in Scotland, which the Bill does not specifically address. The legal status of Scots Gaelic requires an amendment to the Bill, and perhaps we will table such an amendment later in the parliamentary process. I would not dare to speak for Ulster Members, but the recent welcome encouragement for Ulster Scots might call for the extension of the facility to the north of Ireland. Although that point has a particular local character, it is serious. I regret the fact that the good practice on bilingualism in Wales is not replicated elsewhere in the Bill. The Bill contains provisions relating to languages other than English, but perhaps the Government will consider that particular point on the descriptions.
	I want to make one more point about language, which concerns the term Annibynwr, or independent. I have no truck with political correctness, but there are people who would contend that Annibynwr is gender specific. It means "the independent man" rather than "the independent person"—Annibynwraig refers to an independent woman. The situation could be easily resolved by the use of the adjectival form Annibynniol, which avoids the gender issue, and I commend that construction to the Government.
	In Wales, Annibynwr is likely to be associated in the public mind not with an independent member of a council, or, for that matter, an independent Member of the House of Commons, but with a member of the Union of Welsh Independents. In my part of Wales, the Presbyterian Church of Wales predominates—I am a Calvinistic Methodist—and in more sectarian times the term Annibynwr had a more unkind usage. As a child, I remember reciting:
	"Methodistiaid eistedd lawr
	Annibynwyr ar y llawr".
	Freely translated, it means that the Methodists have the pews and the independents have to sit on the floor, to which the independents would sometimes reply:
	"Annibynwyr eistedd lawr
	Methodistiaid ar y llawr",
	which suggests that Methodists should sit on the floor. That is a digression, but the link between Annibynwr and a particular sect should be avoided, so I commend the word, "annibynol" to the Government.
	Finally, Plaid Cymru and, I assume, the SNP call for greater transparency in the funding of political campaigns in Wales. I want to see clearer enforcement of the use of accounting units. That point does not specifically affect my party, because we campaign only in Wales. However, other parties campaign in Wales and across the UK, and there is a temptation—I will only call it that—to spend campaign money in Wales but account for it elsewhere. I hope not. Surely the enforcement of clearer accounting units would deal with that. Greater accuracy and transparency can only be good for the political process in Wales.
	Individual registration has been mentioned by several hon. Members, notably the hon. Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers). I note my party's support for the Electoral Commission's standpoint; we would want individual registration to be introduced as soon as possible.

Julie Morgan: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this important debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams). I appreciated his in-depth description of the Welsh language terms that we use in Wales.
	I welcome the Bill. I am anxious that the fear of fraud does not overwhelm its other objectives, which are access to voting for all and the highest possible turnout, and I congratulate the Minister of State on the efforts that she has made to try to strike that balance. In my constituency, the turnout was 70 per cent. at the last election; that is a good turnout and one of the best in Wales. When I was first elected in 1997, the turnout was 80 per cent. I think that that 10 per cent. drop is echoed in most constituencies. It is therefore important that we do all that we possibly can to encourage people to vote, and I welcome the parts of the Bill that apply to that.
	The electoral registration officer in Cardiff has always had a good record in getting as many people as possible on to the register. During the last election campaign, when we called on houses in multiple occupation I was struck by the fact that the individuals who were there matched the people who were supposed to be living in the household. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who knocked on many of those doors with me, will agree that it was a very good register. I welcome the extra powers that the officer will have as a result of the Bill.
	However, I am worried about certain aspects of the Bill, including the proposals on individual registration. I accept that the term "head of the household" is outdated, and it is unfortunate that it is used, but moving to an individual registration system could have a detrimental effect on the number of people on the register. Young people, particularly students and those living in houses in multiple occupation, may miss out when the so-called head of the household registers the whole family. We must be careful in moving down this track. Although ideally it is probably the best solution, in practice it may mean that we lose many more people from the electoral register. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones) mentioned the millions who are already missing, and we must bear that in mind. I am glad that the Government are approaching this cautiously by carrying out pilots, and I hope that they will monitor them carefully.
	I am pleased that electors will be able to register to vote much nearer to the day of the election, but I am concerned about changing the deadline for applications for postal votes from six to 11 days. I understand the reasoning behind that—it gives more time to check that fraud does not take place—but there is a danger that lots of people may lose their vote. For example, how would somebody who was admitted to hospital at the last minute get an emergency postal vote? In the 11 days before the last vote, there were numerous examples in my constituency of people phoning up wanting to get an emergency postal vote because of illness. Can anything be done about that?
	Given the huge advances in technology, it seems wrong that 11 days are required to process a postal vote. Surely there must be a quicker way of doing it while ensuring the safety of the vote. We should not cut out those people who need postal votes at the last minute for reasons beyond their control. I am pleased that the Government are supporting postal voting, which has extended the franchise and improved people's participation enormously. The nature of people's families today, and the number of people who have caring responsibilities, not only for children but for elderly people, makes it essential to have a postal voting system, and I am pleased that the Minister has said that that option will always be available.
	I should like at this point to pay tribute to someone in my constituency, Wendy Laing, who worked tirelessly to encourage people to vote and who sadly died earlier this month.
	I am concerned about a couple of issues that arise when electors have to sign for their ballot paper at the polling station. I am sure that other Members have experienced the situation whereby at some point in the day there is a huge rush of people wanting to get in and vote. Has the Minister thought about the practical implications of having to sign for one's ballot paper at the same time as one goes in to vote? The only purpose of signing for one's ballot paper is so that it can be checked if there is a query, and that depends on having individual signatures at the time of registration. We have to try to make the system simpler. During my last count, an hour was spent poring over hundreds of votes because the marks were not clear. Torches were sent for and the ballot papers were held up to the light—at the request of my opponent's agent, I might say—to establish that the votes were legitimate. The hour while those votes were studied was very frustrating, and it seemed to me that there should be a system that would do away with such a situation.
	Another concern regarding signing for the ballot paper is the possibility that electors might feel that there is some doubt about the secrecy of the ballot paper if they have to sign for it first.
	What will be the position of somebody who cannot read and write, as a significant number of adults cannot, when they go to vote? If we are able to encourage them to go to vote—I accept that many of them may not do so—what can we do to give them privacy so that they are not embarrassed about the fact that they cannot find their name? I have had the experience of trying to encourage such people to vote and trying to explain how the ballot paper will look and that one need only put a cross on it where one wishes. I am sure that people from all parties have been through that process. If we say to them as soon as they get there, "You've got to publicly sign for your ballot paper", that might discourage one of the more disadvantaged groups in our society from playing their part in the democratic process. They should not be put off by the fact that they cannot read or write. I hope that the Minister will think about the implications of that.
	I welcome the steps to improve access, particularly taking children into polling stations and the voting booth so that they can learn the habit of voting early on, because there is a danger that they may never get into that habit. I know canvassers who have gone into houses to sit with children while their parents are driven to vote and others who have looked after children in a car while their parents voted. The proposal is therefore eminently sensible and will be good for children and democracy.
	I welcome the opportunity that the Bill provides to tackle many of the barriers facing disabled people when they register to vote, especially the introduction of a system that enables the maximum number of disabled people to vote unaided and in privacy. As was said earlier, disabled people expect to have the same range of places in which to vote as able-bodied people. They need to be able to go into the polling station as well as to get a postal vote.
	Other steps, which are not included in the Bill, should be taken to increase participation. I support many of the proposals that have been mentioned for increasing the number of people on the electoral register. I believe that the voting age should be lowered to 16 so that people get into the habit of voting when they are young and still in school, where they can discuss the issues in a group. I hope that voting young would set a voting pattern for them for the rest of their lives.
	I believe that voting in Westminster elections should be more proportional so that electors feel that their votes count. Again, that would help to increase participation. I do not support compulsory voting. It is up to us as politicians to make electors believe that there is a reason to vote. That, too, would increase participation.
	We can do many things to increase participation but one of the most important is making our politics relevant to people. We can do many things in the House, through the way in which we operate and practise politics in our day-to-day work to try to reach out to people. That is as important as all the issues that the Bill covers.

Andrew Pelling: I am pleased to speak in the debate as I am such a heavy user of electoral registration officers' services, having run in three different elections—local, regional and national—over the past three years.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) rightly emphasised the issue of credibility. Credibility is important when someone is running in a parliamentary seat where the majority is just 75 votes.
	The issues that came up sporadically in my election included personation: people turned up at the polling station to find that they had already voted or to be told that they had been provided with a postal voting form, although they were not aware of it. That example emphasises the importance of creating such credibility. Although I am sure that the result of my election was accurate, I am concerned that the credibility of elections is being undermined in such a way.
	The Minister, in introducing the debate, emphasised the importance of the legislation in the context of concerns about fraud in UK elections. Although some Members have suggested that the process of election is not one in which we face much fraudulent activity, it is worrying when the Electoral Reform Society says that there is significant fraud in UK elections. In those circumstances, the introduction of the legislation is welcome, but there are clearly real concerns, especially over how postal voting and all-postal voting elections have proceeded.
	I took the opportunity to sit in on the appeal that Lord Justice Woolf heard on the grossly fraudulent behaviour in Blackburn. That emphasises the fact that we need work to be done now to provide confidence in our system of election. I am concerned that it is proposed that there should be pilot schemes only at this stage, because it strikes me that personal identifiers are common to many people in our community, who find themselves signing many different documents from day to day.
	I welcome the Minister's comments on the provision of £17 million for resourcing the work of electoral registration officers because that is the best way to ensure that we have the best quality of electoral registration, rather than going through a pilot scheme process. I understand the concerns expressed about the tremendous shortfall in registration, which, as other Members have said, is a very important issue in London. In my constituency and the neighbouring constituency of Croydon, North, it appears that 17,000 eligible people have not found their way on to the register.
	The Minister said that she was concerned about a tremendous fragmentation in registration in London. I was not entirely sure that I understood her point about the Mayor having some role in the process, because during Greater London authority elections he, or the GLA, is reliant on the work of the individual boroughs. Certainly, the Mayor must have a role in publicity and advertising the importance of registration ahead of the election, but what else might his role encompass?
	I have noted the point about being able to secure postal votes only 11 days ahead of an election. While that is a positive step, we must also recognise that the huge spike in activity ahead of the election will put real stresses and strains on electoral registration officers. From my experience in the general election, I believe that we should also take cognizance of the fact that those postal votes find their way to electors very slowly, with the consequent problem of returning them in time. Extra emphasis must be put on effectively resourcing electoral registration officers.
	Like other Conservative Members, I am worried about the proposal to reduce the rate at which deposits are lost. The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) provided us with the useful information that the UK Independence party might benefit most from that proposal. I hope that the Government have not been motivated by a desire to cause even more consternation among Conservatives about being undermined by a party slightly to the right of us.
	I am interested in the Bill's proposal to allow for a proper following-up of election expenses up to four months ahead of the election. It is a worthy proposal. When I joined colleagues on a visit to the US, the US politicians to whom I spoke were surprised to find that, in theory, we could spend as much as we wanted until a few weeks before the election. The proposal is important and I hope that there will be a practical means of ensuring an increase in the very low level of expenses allowed if the period is extended to four months. I will be interested to hear an explanation of how that will work when the timing of general elections is less certain.

Eric Pickles: It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson), as she and I were political opponents in the constituency of Brentwood and Ongar in 2001. We have all had a glimpse today of how formidable a political opponent she can be, and I am sure that she will prove an enormous success in the House. She was very brave, furthermore, to take on the Government over giving the vote to prisoners.
	I did not entirely follow the hon. Lady's logic over giving the vote to 16-year-olds. She seemed to say that people at 16 pay taxes, but so do some young people at 14 or even five, insofar as people with money to spend purchase items that are subject to value added tax. It seems an entirely phoney argument to me. It does not really matter whether it is 17 or 16, but there must be an age at which all the rights accrue. There cannot be a halfway house in which people get part rights and no responsibilities. Some young people are in the Army at 16, but they cannot stand on the front line. I find the idea of child soldiers at the front line repugnant and I do not like the idea of 16-year-olds entering into credit agreements. The argument is misplaced, but it was advanced powerfully.
	I regret the way in which the debate has seemed to offer us two choices: individual registration or increasing the turnout. It seems somehow that if we opt for individual registration, we are sacrificing voter registration and turnout. I simply do not accept that, but I believe that we must do two important things.
	First, the Bill must make the electoral system entirely proof from systematic and sustained fraud. Secondly, it must reassure the public that they can trust the electoral system. Members have referred to the MORI poll, which showed for the first time that people believe that it is now easier to commit electoral fraud and are concerned about it.
	I have been involved in elections for nearly 40 years. In the past few years, people have become increasingly worried about the safety of our electoral system. My electoral registration officer in Brentwood is Mr. Jim Stevens, who tells me that since the general election more than 400 people have returned their postal vote registrations because they do not want to continue voting in that way. In the general election, a number of people were worried that their postal vote would somehow be taken away from them or rendered illegitimate.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) talked about observers from Ukraine and other democracies who had witnessed our general election. They produced a report, "Democratic Institutions, and Human Rights Mission", and we would do well to listen to some of their remarks. The report mentioned the introduction in 2000 of "postal voting on demand", and it said that the lack of an application process
	"demonstrated the vulnerability of any trust-based electoral process".
	Until the past few years, our electoral system was trust based. We must try to find a way to rebuild trust in our system.
	Much has been said about the case in Birmingham, and I shall not repeat any quotations that have been offered to the House. I do not mean my remarks in any way to be a barb for any Labour Members in the Chamber, or for their party in general, but one passage in the electoral court report into the matter is especially chilling. It states:
	"Here we have two wards, some distance apart, in both of which the Labour party organisation has conducted a large and skilful campaign of electoral fraud, using precisely the same techniques in each case. This cannot be a coincidence. But did it go wider? In my view, it does."
	It is a shock to realise that our system has become so vulnerable to systematic fraud, but we must accept some of the lessons so eloquently set out by the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson). The dilemma is often described as how to strike the balance between security and turnout, but I suspect that few people will be willing to turn out in an election if they do not trust the system.
	I believe that the balance to be struck is between sensible security, over-reaction, and security against fraud. I shall deal first with security against fraud, which involves the problem of individual registration.
	I see no reason not to move towards individual registration. The discussion about whether we should use national insurance numbers was utterly pointless. Sure, we could use some other method—iris recognition, DNA, blood sample, or a person's ability to recite the "Star Trek" cast list.

Alan Whitehead: The Bill is good and wide ranging. I have also found out the true identity of Michael Caine, which is given in the explanatory notes. I am not sure whether that affects the right of the celebrity known as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite to anonymous registration.
	I was disappointed that the Opposition have decided to divide the House, as their opposition to the Bill seems manufactured. Although several Members have discussed their differences with the Bill, they could by and large be resolved in Committee, as can my concerns about it.
	The Bill is a three-legged stool and the Opposition have concentrated on one leg, which they think should be made four or five times as fat as the other two legs. The principle of the three-legged stool—as many people as possible should be able to vote, as many people as possible should actually vote and as few people as possible should abuse the vote—is central to getting electoral registration and participation in elections right. Equal attention to all three criteria is important.
	It is right to look at electoral administration, because there are questions about all three legs. It is undoubtedly true that the state of registration is a cause for concern. In some parts of the country, as Members have said, a slow train crash seems to be in progress; in many urban areas, registration is dipping below even the incomplete census figures. Of course, we can only discharge the second leg—electoral balance—if people are registered to vote in the first place and in some of those areas turnout is also low, which means that only a low percentage of a low percentage of people are voting. Unless we proceed carefully we shall undermine confidence in the whole system, as we attempt to deal with the problems by shepherding in abuses along with proper measures to make registration easier and more straightforward. It is important that we understand the interlinked nature of all three elements in dealing with electoral registration and turnout.
	As the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) said, in the past our system was based on a high degree of trust. We do not face problems of trust only in postal voting but also in the whole system—that a person is who they say they are when they vote and that they vote only once. A personal identifier for individual voting would not solve the problem of people registering for insurance or credit purposes; they would simply sign on the dotted line. In many spheres, we still trust people to say who they are.
	Perhaps, in our society, trust is dipping and people feel less inhibited about attempting to obtain electoral advantage by means that would have been seen as venal sins in the past but to some people nowadays are seen merely as venial, if indeed they are considered sins at all. That trust was earned by a system of checks and balances in the ballot, which have mostly stood the test of time. There has not been much abuse of the system over recent years. The public nature of registration and presenting oneself at the polling station have helped. However, modern views about privacy and modern methods of communication present challenges to those checks and balances.
	In the past, there has been serious abuse of the UK system. It took successive Acts of Parliament in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s to deal with that, as the history of the frequent and quite startling election petitions of those days testifies. The problem with election petitions was that a retinue of judges, clerks, scribes and assistants descended on a town to investigate when a petition had been lodged by the unsuccessful candidate. The expense of the entire revenue was borne by the unfortunate ratepayers of the borough, with the perverse result that local people became so fed up with the bills that they incurred that they invariably voted for the candidate of the party that had been unseated by the petition. They blamed the losing candidate for bringing misfortune down on their town. That was perhaps an example of getting an element of those three legs wrong. We might reflect today on whether vesting the costs of registration entirely in the hands of local authorities is similarly a problem.
	As hon. Members have pointed out, the application of registration activity varies greatly between authorities and on the basis of how local councils allocate funds from their budgets. In that context, I was pleased that the Bill states that the budget for publicity and other activities will be ring-fenced at £17 million. It says that the Government may repay electoral registration officers the cost of activities, such as producing publicity, that are intended to increase participation. Perhaps we need to consider in Committee whether that wording will produce essentially a challenge fund or a peel-off-on-demand fund. I would not like to think that the electoral registration officers who undertake such activity risk using the money that they receive from local authorities.
	We still ask some registration officers, by the very nature of the areas for which they are responsible, to undertake enormously greater activity, at far greater public expense, than others who must simply check whether people are still in the same place as they were last year to produce an electoral register that is 98 per cent. or so complete. So we need to have a number of thoughts about the nature of how we fund electoral registration and about the basis of its distribution in the country.
	I hope incidentally that increased publicity will include local measures to explain how to vote. The Bill makes provision for children to go into polling booths with parents. That will ensure that a number of us no longer experience having to sit with children while the parent goes into the polling booth as in previous years. It is a good idea to expose children to the very mechanism of voting, which would happen if they went into the polling booths with their parents. Perhaps, in times past, as families tended to eat together, they tended to go to vote together, and parents showed their families how to vote. With less geographical cohesion in our society, first-time voters may receive information on something about which they are about as familiar as travelling to the moon when they first vote.
	I certainly have experience of talking to young voters who live in flats—perhaps young mums—who start off the exchange by expressing familiar nostrums about not voting because we are all the same or because it makes no difference, but it becomes apparent pretty early in the conversation that they simply do not know how to vote. No one has told them about it. They do not know how to vote or where to vote. They are afraid that they might be embarrassed or make a mess of it or that the process requires much more knowledge about the system than is the case. Measures to familiarise people with voting are therefore important.
	Postal votes are pretty secure once dispatched to a returning officer, but public perception is important. So it is right that we look again at signifiers for both registration and postal votes to ensure that they are more robust but in a way that does not result in the over-complication of registration or in signing for postal votes, so that people simply do not register or, if they are registered, do not cast a vote. Signing on when voting—another provision of the Bill—seems to make an important psychological difference in ensuring that there is a public record and acknowledgement that people are who they claim to be which will stand regardless of how people vote in the privacy of the polling booth.
	Frankly, part of the debate has turned in the past on the perceived advantage of different measures for parties. High turnout is alleged to favour Labour and therefore concern has been expressed about measures to improve it. By the same token, proper concerns about securing the integrity of the ballot have been downplayed sometimes because of the view that the imperative was to improve turnout using new means of voting when their integrity was still questioned. In fact, such issues affect all parties equally.
	I have some concerns about the Bill, as I have said. I am not sure whether reducing the percentage of the vote necessary to preserve one's deposit is wise. There are discussions on both sides of the argument; but on balance, the preservation of a 5 per cent. limit would be wise. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), action should be taken in respect of the activity involving national election expense when such things are truly local election expenses. There are several issues that we should examine properly in Committee.
	I am sorry that when we are considering such an important matter as the legitimacy of all parties through the electoral process, the message may not go out from the House that all parties are behind change. If everyone agreed with the reasoned amendment, we would have no Bill at all to consider, which would be a most perverse outcome. I hope that the Opposition will even now decide not to divide the House and allow the Bill to go to Committee. We could then discuss the Bill together and send the message on electoral registration and voting that we mean business by ensuring that the electoral system is accessible, usable and secure.

Barbara Keeley: I welcome the new measures in the Bill relating to registration, and the new powers given to returning officers to improve access to voting and promote participation. A number of my hon. Friends mentioned the increasing difficulties that electoral registration officers have with registration, particularly in inner-city areas. The standard method for many authorities has been the annual canvass, but on its own that is proving increasingly ineffective. In Salford local authority, registration levels vary from 75 to 92 per cent. by constituency. Happily, mine is the constituency at 92 per cent., so I can feel a little more comfortable, but I know that wards in our authority show a level as low as 64 per cent. Clearly, it is cause for concern that one third of households are not registered.
	As hon. Members discussed earlier in the debate, we know the groups among which non-registration peaks. In Salford, the election registration officer has difficulty with certain tower blocks near Salford university, where access for the canvass is difficult and where there is a high turnover of occupants, with many students who are registered elsewhere, as has been discussed. Some of the flats are owned by companies, which is a new development, and there are many six-month tenancies, which is a problem when the peak of our registration activity occurs at a certain time of year.
	In the debate many of us have acknowledged a crisis in registration. The issue needs addressing in years to come. The measures in the Bill that start to address it are most welcome. Data sharing will be a help, to ensure that electoral registration officers get the most comprehensive data for the register. A number of suggestions were made earlier about agencies that might share data on household occupants, such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, TV Licensing, tax credit agencies, housing associations and arm's length management organisations. I hope that those suggestions for extra sources of data can be followed up and used by local authorities to help them build and improve their registers.
	I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister's caution in not making a change to individual registration. We know that when such a change was made in Northern Ireland, it caused a dip of 10 per cent. in registration. With wards that stand at only 60 per cent., we cannot make a change that would further reduce that figure. In evidence to the Joint Select Committees on electoral registration in 2004–05 the electoral registration officer for Trafford foresaw that
	"whole areas of the electorate would not respond"
	to requests for individual registration, particularly among the groups, including young people, who we know are already the poorest respondents. The electoral registration officer for Salford told me today that in his view individual registration would be like
	"a throwback to the poll tax",
	as it would make registration numbers drop like a stone and not recover for very many years. Those were his words.
	It is known that if young people do not register to vote when they attain voting age, they become less and less likely to register and then to vote. I have talked on the doorstep to people in their early 30s who admitted that they have never voted, as if that were a badge of honour. We should not underestimate the problem. It threatens the future legitimacy of our democracy.
	On postal votes, I have had substantial experience of leading in local government in all-postal vote pilots. Based on that experience, I have a positive view of that voting method. In Trafford we ran pilots of all-postal voting in 2002 and 2003. In the first pilot, making voting easier by all-out postal voting raised turnout from 33 to 52 per cent. We all felt that once turnout was over 50 per cent. in our local elections, we had more of a mandate and that our decision-making was more legitimate. That is the key issue to balance the other concerns that people have—are we legitimate in what we do in local government?
	It is important to point out what we thought were the elements that contributed to the success of those pilots. First, there was a drive by the council to ensure that the new voting procedure worked well for our electors. Then, there was the involvement and support of all political parties, good co-operation from and co-ordination of tasks with Royal Mail, and a simplification of the process by designing a ballot paper that was easy to use, with simple, easy-to-follow instructions.
	Finally, publicity issued by local authorities such as information about candidates, an explanation of the councillor's role or even a description of a postal vote's journey is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) has pointed out the need constantly to explain to people how their vote works and what happens to it, particularly in the case of postal voting. The Bill includes many of those elements: it sets performance standards for local authorities on elections; it gives returning officers and electoral registration officers a new power to encourage participation in the electoral process; and it provides powers to prescribe a different and hopefully simple form of ballot paper.
	Although the Bill does not mention this, I hope that it will become routine to co-operate with the Royal Mail on the delivery of an increasing number of postal ballot packs. In my experience of local government, some issues cause problems with all-postal voting. We tried a complicated witness statement in the early pilot, but then we dropped it and did not use it again. A complicated ballot form can also cause problems—the June 2004 ballot form in the north-west for the joint elections was far too complicated for many voters. Local authorities that are less than enthusiastic about postal voting are an issue in my region. For instance, some authorities made it difficult for voters to obtain replacements for lost or spoiled ballot papers. The co-operation of the Royal Mail on deliveries is also important. In one case, less than 1 per cent. of the electorate in a polling district of 600 people voted, which suggests non-delivery of ballot papers.
	Setting performance standards for local authorities in elections is a key step forward. I hope that it will gradually change situations in which local authorities are unprepared, are not proactive, have inaccessible or inconvenient polling stations or obstruct postal voters. Our residents, and younger people in particular, need encouragement to register to vote. I welcome the Bill, which will start to ensure that all local authorities perform to the best standard.

James McGovern: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) on his excellent maiden speech. He is a welcome addition to this place and I look forward to working with him.
	I rise to support the Bill, the necessity for which has recently become clear to me. As a first-time parliamentary candidate at the May election, I was concerned that I encountered so many people who were totally disenfranchised. Those people were not illegally resident in the UK, criminals or attempting to opt out of society. Indeed, many of them were not particularly apathetic about the political process. Many of those people had been disenfranchised almost by accident. Many of them believed that they were already registered; some had recently moved and found that they had missed the deadline to sign up; and others had simply mislaid the letter from the registration officer and let the whole prospect of an election slip from their minds.
	In the same way as we have a problem persuading people to save for a pension, we also find it difficult to persuade people to register to vote. Although turnout at the previous election was particularly low at 61 per cent., that hides a much harder statistic. A survey by the British Election Study team found that turnout among those who earned less than £15,000 a year, which I accept is an arbitrary figure, was as low as 49 per cent., compared with 68 per cent. among those who earned more than £15,000 a year. The difference is roughly 20 percentage points, which is unacceptable.
	I am not naive enough to believe that any of the provisions in the Bill will actually increase the number of people who want to vote, which is a job for politicians rather than for this type of legislation. The need to inspire the population into wanting to vote is a debate for a different time and place, but it is clear that we should not place barriers in the way of people who may want to vote.
	The Bill will go some way to addressing the problems that I encountered while campaigning in Dundee, West. It begins with the establishment of the co-ordinated on-line record of electors, which is commonly known as CORE. If we were to mention to our constituents that there is no central record of the electoral register or that the various different registers are almost entirely incompatible, many of them would find it hard to believe. It is sensible to co-ordinate the different systems, especially in the light of the lack of coterminosity between constituencies in Scotland. It may seem simple to conduct such co-ordination, but the process is rather complicated, so I am grateful that the CORE scheme has a long history.
	In 2004, the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs said that it was disappointed by the progress of the CORE scheme, despite its long existence as an idea, but reaffirmed that it had widespread support. I believe that to be true; it is the scheme best suited to address these problems. Standardised electoral registers will benefit political parties, people who move around often, and electoral officers who need to use the system.
	It is believed that the system will lead to individual registration. All that I can say to that is, "The sooner the better." An ideal situation would be one in which someone is able to enrol on the electoral register when they are 18 and their enrolment is kept active throughout their life, so that their only responsibility is to inform the CORE keeper—a term that reminds me somewhat of a science fiction movie—of their change of address. That would enable people to be on the register even if they forget to re-register in new places, and would make the system much more sustainable.
	I am also of the opinion that this form of registration will hopefully lead to, or at least encourage, large-scale registration among the group who are most disenfranchised under the current situation: recent attainers.It is worrying that so many 18 to 24-year-olds are not registered. Evidence suggests that recent attainers are less likely to be registered if the head of household is not registered. Many recent attainers are being disenfranchised not so much because they lack a desire to be involved in democracy as because of a system that bases one's vote on the head of a household filling in a form. I hope that that will eventually be sorted out. I see the CORE scheme as a first step to achieving some form of individual registration, and welcome it as such.
	I understand the need for the scheme to be suitably piloted first, but I would welcome some guidance from the Minister as to how long the pilot schemes will last. I would be more comfortable with a defined period of piloting to be laid down in the Bill. It need not be set in stone, but it would at least provide some form of guarantee that the scheme is to be implemented as soon as practically possible. If the pilots are successful, we should implement them immediately.
	Registration is a critical factor. The amount of people who are not registered to vote is distressing to any democrat on either side of the House. In Scotland, there is a long history of that and it is a more serious problem. Ever since the poll tax was introduced a year earlier in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, there has been a mini-flight from being registered on the local electoral register. Although the people who left the register do not have the same political issue to protest about, the idea of being unregistered has festered with a small, but not insignificant, minority in Scotland. Most people want to be registered to vote, so we need to give them every opportunity to participate in the registration process. If we then fail to inspire them to vote, it is entirely our fault and cannot be blamed on any administrative problems.
	I welcome the registration provisions in the Bill. I recently wrote to my electoral registration officer raising my concerns about the level of registration that I had experienced during the election campaign. Although I welcome the reply that I got and the effort made by council staff in trying to register the whole community, I was a little concerned about the paucity of the response that we expect from our councils. The Representation of the People Act 1983 requires that the electoral registration officer sends out a letter to every address in the city and that that is then followed by a letter to every address that does not respond. I welcome that, but feel that it does not go far enough. The response rate in Dundee is about 87 per cent., which leaves a large number of people still languishing in the aforementioned democracy desert.
	The proposals in the Bill bulk up that provision, and I hope that they will lead to more people being registered. Rolling registration has helped the situation and I hope that the provision will strengthen it further. The responsibility for the council to take part in house-to-house inquiries to back up the initial canvass is welcome. I sincerely hope that this will pick up more of the disenfranchised and help to provide everyone with an opportunity to vote.
	Also welcome is the provision to allow people to register much closer to the date of the election. The new deadline is to be within 11 working days of the election. That is vital. Evidence from the Electoral Commission suggests that people who are directly contacted during an election campaign have a 77 per cent. voting record. That is outstanding and shows the importance of us all as local representatives getting out and meeting the people we represent. It is not much of a jump for us then to surmise that people are more likely to register when they meet candidates; and as we all know, people see much more of the candidates during the election period.
	I imagine that many Members will discuss the Bill negatively because of the Government's refusal to jettison postal voting. I take the alternative view and welcome that decision warmly. Although many may feel that those who are unable to vote are the sort of people who are so lazy that they do not deserve the vote, I take a different position.
	According to recent studies, 40 per cent. of young people who did not vote in the most recent election intended to do so but did not get around to it. I accept that there may be some hubris in the responses and that some people feel bad about owning up to apathy, but the figure proves a point. If we accept that our society is becoming increasingly post consumerist and that the urge to vote is perceived as being equal to the urge to protest or discuss political issues in pubs and clubs throughout the country, we should make it as easy as possible to vote.
	Many people commute to work and thus, if they work late, they miss the polling station. Many others want to vote but would prefer not to go to the polling station. Others have legitimate reasons that make it unreasonable to expect them to go to a polling station. Postal voting has a positive effect on our democracy. As long it proves to be safe, we should continue with it.
	I would like to consider the provision that relates to allowing people who have not received a postal vote to vote in person on the day. That is vital. On 5 May, I met two young women who had been turned away from their polling station because the clerk had registered them as postal voters. The fact that they did not consider themselves to be postal voters is a slightly different issue that should not be tackled here. However, their total disfranchisement because of a mistake or deception perpetuated elsewhere is categorically unfair. I therefore welcome the change and I am glad that the Government have acted on that.
	The Bill's role is not to inspire people to vote. However, it will ensure that fewer obstacles lie in the way of anyone who has even the slightest inclination to participate in the democratic process. The measure will not do our job for us and it is incumbent on us all to engage with people as much as possible and encourage everyone to participate in a vital process.

Eleanor Laing: The debate has been constructive and the Bill contains some good provisions. Nevertheless, I urge my hon. Friends to support the reasoned amendment, which my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) moved so eloquently. As he said, much remains to be done, for example, on individual registration. The Government have not given a good reason for not doing what has been tried and tested in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) accurately showed.
	The Minister did not give a good reason for lowering the threshold for the loss of a deposit. In my constituency, the BNP took 3.9 per cent. of the votes in the general election. Rewarding it with a return of a deposit—the Bill would do that on those figures—would give it a status that it does not deserve. In making such a generalisation, I do not suggest that the Scottish National party does not have a status. It has a high status, which it deserves. The fact that it gets only a small share of the vote is another matter.
	We have heard much about the problems and pitfalls of postal voting. Again, no good reason has been given to justify the Government's position. Modernisation is justifiable only if it replaces the status quo with something better, not simply with something different. Of course, we all want more people to participate in elections. However, in the final reckoning, there must be an element of personal motivation that makes someone exercise his or her democratic right.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) said, it is Parliament's duty to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to vote and, as the hon. Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) and for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) said, no one should be denied access to the polls, physically or otherwise, because of a disability or an inability. The Bill deals with that fairly adequately. However, it is absurd to develop a system that bends over backwards to try to make people vote and consequently destroys the checks and balances that make the system fair. That serves only to undermine the democracy that we intend to enhance.
	I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in congratulating the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) on his maiden speech. It was a pleasure to hear his tribute to his predecessor and friend, whose charm, wit and wisdom we all miss, whether we agreed with his policies or not. The hon. Gentleman's description of the way in which he had administered a "jag" to a man who was "off his heid"—I understood what he meant—certainly marks him out for a great career in the Government Whips Office.
	I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) supports the Bill. We all commend the Government for adopting his proposals to remedy situations similar to the unique state of affairs that arose when his Liberal Democrat opponent so tragically died a few days before the general election. My hon. Friend eloquently explained how such a situation could precipitate a constitutional crisis. I would venture to suggest that the absence of my hon. Friend's constitutional wisdom from the House was itself a mini-crisis, and we were pleased to have him restored to us after only seven weeks.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) was right in what he said about the disgraceful treatment of members of the armed forces, large numbers of whom were deprived of the right to vote, even when they were fighting for their country and losing their lives in Iraq. The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) appeared to agree that that state of affairs was unacceptable. However, there is nothing in the Bill to remedy the situation. We look forward to hearing what the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) has to say in a few minutes' time, when he will have the opportunity to explain further what the Government intend to do to remedy the injustice currently meted out to serving soldiers, airmen and others.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Peter Viggers), as a member of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, brought wisdom and experience to the debate. He and my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) both made the fundamental point that, as the whole electoral system is vulnerable to fraud, and that a small amount of fraud has a large effect on undermining confidence in the system, it is very important that we ensure that our precious democracy is not undermined in that way. Let us not exaggerate. We all know that, fundamentally, we have a great system. It is probably the best and most secure electoral system anywhere in the world, and it is one on which many other democracies have based their systems. So let us not now, for the sake of modernisation or political correctness, go blindly down a road that would be likely to diminish the security of that system and to undermine it.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who spoke on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, made it clear why they are not the official Opposition in the House—

David Heath: Explain!

David Heath: No!

David Cairns: No. I have only eight minutes, whereas the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) had 25 minutes.
	As my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said in her opening speech, the issue is not one of principle. We are not in principle opposed to or in favour of individual identifiers. We are saying, "Let us pilot it and see what happens." First, we need to see whether the hoped-for security benefits materialise. Secondly, we need to find out whether there will be the feared reduction in numbers of people registered, as expressed in speech after speech—and which one Member referred to as a catastrophic drop. If we go ahead with the pilots, the Electoral Commission will assess those and bring its assessment back to the Secretary of State. We would not need new primary legislation to make those pilots apply across the UK, as one or two Members suggested. We feel that a proper evidence base is needed before we proceed. That was one of the two major themes mentioned by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire.
	Given that I have gone some way towards meeting what the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire said, I appeal to him, even at this late hour, to reconsider his unwise decision to divide the House on the issue. There is a wide measure of cross-party support, and every other party represented in the speeches this evening will support the Government in the Lobby—not because they agree with every measure in the Bill, but because they understand that defeating the Bill at this stage does away with any chance in the near future to get the measures that we all want on to the statute book. Given the consensual approach to the matter, we could proceed with much greater cross-party co-operation in Committee if we did not divide at this stage, but that is a matter for him.
	We were privileged this evening to hear an excellent maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine). He was right that many tributes have been paid to Robin Cook as a parliamentarian and world statesman. He paid tribute to him as a constituency Member of Parliament, however, and as someone who spent quite a bit of time with my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston during the by-election I saw that reflected on doorstep after doorstep. I often think that MPs overstate the personal vote. In Livingston it was not overstated—Robin Cook had a very strong personal vote. During that by-election, my hon. Friend plied me with huge quantities of Fry's Turkish Delight on a daily basis, and as Members can see my efforts to refuse the temptation were hopeless. I formed the impression during the by-election that he was an outstanding candidate, and I have no doubt whatever that he will be an outstanding Member of Parliament.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) welcomed the Bill, said it was not perfect, but wanted a Second Reading so that he could raise some of the issues that we have been discussing in Committee. That is a sensible approach. He spoke of the tension between the integrity of the register and comprehensiveness, between the need to tackle fraud and the need to maximise the register. The Government do not believe that it is either/or; we believe that it is both/and. We tackle fraud and we maximise the register: we do both at the same time.The hon. Gentleman also made some interesting suggestions about the duplication of reporting, which we will certainly consider if he raises the issue in Committee.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) raised a couple of specific issues, one relating to postal-vote provision and the other to a case in the constituency of our hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch, East (Rosemary McKenna). I assure her that the Bill takes steps to deal with both. My hon. Friend, however, devoted most of her speech to access issues. The Bill provides for four-yearly reviews of polling stations, but it is, of course, completely unacceptable that she could not gain access to a polling station in her constituency at the last election. That should not have happened, and it must not happen again. The review will focus on precisely those issues.
	The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) spoke of the extraordinary situation in which he found himself. We should remember that at the heart of that was a personal tragedy—the death of a Liberal Democrat candidate, Jo Harrison. As we examine the political ramifications, it is important to think of the human dimensions and to send our sympathies to Jo Harrison's family for the tragedy that produced those circumstances. The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government will be prepared to consider his amendment in Committee, and I look forward to working with him then.
	It is often invidious to pick out one outstanding contribution, but I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) made it. He has tabled hundreds of questions and addressed the issue in depth. He repeatedly said that if we are to have individual registration schemes for the whole country, we need an evidence base. The evidence base simply is not there, he said. He also raised the issue of databases, which has become another important theme.
	The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) spoke of his concern about postal voting. He said that the postal voting experiment had gone wrong, but, with respect, I do not agree. Where there are abuses, where there are frauds, we come down on those abuses and frauds like a tonne of bricks; but I will not apologise for extending people's ability to engage in postal voting.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A (Programme motions),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Electoral Administration Bill:
	Committal
	1. The following shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House—
	(a) Clauses 9 to 18;
	(b) any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to Part 2 or Part 3 of the Bill;
	(c) any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to the procedure to be followed at an election on the death of a candidate;
	(d) any new Clauses or new Schedules relating to candidates standing in more than one constituency at an election.
	2. The remainder of the Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
	Proceedings in Committee
	3. Proceedings in Committee of the whole House shall be completed in one day.
	4. Those proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table and shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of that Table.
	
		TABLE
		
			 Proceedings Time for conclusion of proceedings 
			 Clauses 9 to 12, new Clauses relating to Part 2 of the Bill, new Schedules relating to Part 2 of the Bill. Two and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Bill. 
			 Clauses 13 to 18, new Clauses relating to Part 3 of the Bill, new Schedules relating to Part 3 of the Bill. Two and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on Clause 13. 
			 New Clauses and new Schedules relating to the procedure to be followed at an election on the death of a candidate or relating to candidates standing in more than one constituency at an election. The moment of interruption or one hour after the commencement of proceedings on the first such new Clause, whichever is the later. 
		
	
	5. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to the proceedings in Committee of the whole House.
	Proceedings in Standing Committee
	6. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 24th November.
	7. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	Proceedings after Committee
	8. When the provisions of the Bill considered respectively by the Committee of the whole House and by the Standing Committee have been reported to the House, the Bill shall be proceeded with as if it had been reported as a whole from the Standing Committee.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	9. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	10. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	11. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Programming of proceedings
	12. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Mr. Cawsey.]
	Question agreed to.

Matthew Taylor: I welcome the opportunity to return to an issue that I have debated on a number of occasions, most recently in an Adjournment debate about three years ago, when I made the case for community and village halls that have suffered a funding gap for essential repairs to buildings, many of which were constructed during the first and second world wars and are fundamental to the communities they serve. Over the past couple of years, and especially over the past six months, I have been pressing the case that lottery funding should be made available.
	That was the case I wanted to make in my Adjournment debate. Clearly, the Government and the lottery fund have been listening, because yesterday it was announced that about £50 million would be made available over the next three years, which I very much welcome. I have been corresponding on the issue with the Big Lottery Fund and with Ministers for some time, as the Minister knows, and the funding will mean a big change for a large number of village halls and community facilities throughout the country.
	There has been a funding gap. Although specific money has been available for new facilities, such as those for the disabled, and money has been available for projects in community and village halls, such as education, training and information technology, there has been a significant lack of the capital resources that are essential for the renewal of buildings. Although I welcome the announcement of the new funding, and suspect that the Adjournment debate may have helped, I still want to raise some issues that arise from it.
	To give some context, I shall give a current example from my constituency. Veryan parish hall, like most such halls, was built some time ago; in this case, by the British Legion in 1926. More recently, a benefactor bought it and presented it to Veryan parish council and it operates as a charity serving the community. The activities that take place are typical for halls of that sort: scouts and guides, pantomimes, yoga, women's institute meetings, plant sales and all sorts of community events. However, kitchen and office facilities are limited and there is no small meeting room of the sort that are in such short supply in those communities. The building fabric needs renewal. As buses to the main town do not run after 6 pm, people without transport have to rely on such facilities.
	Such community halls are especially prevalent in Cornwall, which has many small villages and towns, whereas most counties have larger towns and cities. Like many similar community halls and facilities, Veryan hall applied for a grant from the lottery fund to improve the kitchen, parking, access—in accordance with the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—and other parts of the hall. The application was backed by Cornwall rural community council, the parish council and other local community groups.
	All that work was done by volunteers, and after going through a complicated process, with visits from financial officials, and having received positive feedback, they were told that they did meet the funding criteria because the area was not deprived enough. That is ironic as Cornwall is recognised as the poorest county in the country, but its rural communities do not fill many of the tick boxes for deprivation, such as low car ownership. It is almost impossible to exist in those communities without a car. Another reason was that not enough people from an ethnic minority would benefit from the funding. Those criteria would rule out most village halls in Cornwall.
	Although it is important that lottery funds are awarded against fair criteria in each case, it was felt that they are stacked against rural applications. The county was not thought to be poor because it did not have the same problems as urban areas but, perhaps most important, no funding is really designed to help decaying village halls with basic maintenance and renewal, as opposed to individual projects. That is the issue that I have been raising in meetings with Ministers and others over the years. The Veryan community, like many others, has raised a lot of money—about £80,000 towards the total project cost of £190,000—but it is insufficient. It has done a great job raising money but it has no one to turn to.
	The announcement has been made that funds will be available. The Government have much more control over the Big Lottery Fund than over predecessor funds and although we have been told that details of who and what will be eligible will not be announced until next year, will the Minister give some idea of how the funds are to work? Most important, how far will they be earmarked for the renewal of existing infrastructure rather than having to meet the peculiar criteria —that projects should provide new facilities or activities—that have existed since the useful millennium fund?
	The press release is somewhat unclear. It talks about not only the renewal of community buildings and village halls, but new beneficiaries. That issue goes to the heart of whether the fund will produce what we need in Cornwall. An improved hall may have new beneficiaries—of course, more people are likely to use it—but the key thing is that people often want to keep existing facilities for their communities groups. If they must show that there will be new users or that there will be a major change in the kind of facility on offer, many of them will struggle to do so. After all, funding has been available for the existing uses until now.
	I hope that the Minister will give a feel for the direction that the fund is intended to take. I also hope that he will address a broader concern that I raised during the last Adjournment debate on the issue, when the Minister gave a quite positive response, but little has happened since. It is a wider concern about the complications of the funding process that the people who operate village halls and community facilities must undertake. Although they are largely volunteers, they are expected to navigate their way through a wide variety of different funds. For some funds, they must go to the South West of England Development Agency; for others, they must go to other regional development agencies, the Big Lottery Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund or the Local Government Association, each of which may have funds available but only if certain criteria are met. For example, the RDA places funds only where the beneficiaries can illustrate economic outputs. So the RDA could help to fund a new computer suite to train local people, but not provide funds to repair a leaking roof.
	The process is complicated and people are uncertain about where to go for funding, despite the fact that organisations such as the rural community councils do a very good job in signposting. It would be enormously helpful if something could be done to simplify the cocktail of possibilities and enable volunteers to gain access to funds more easily.

Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend is right to suggest that there is never a single pot or a single entry point, given the nature of government these days, but one or two counties have experimented with a single front door into the various funds. There has been an organisational pulling together of the opportunities. As development work is ongoing and liaison is taking place with organisations such as ACRE—Action with Communities in Rural England—I hope that there will be an effort to discover whether it is possible not just to provide funding through the Big Lottery Fund to renew such infrastructure, but to make the process more simple when those largely voluntary organisations seek to access the wide range of relatively small amounts of funding. We all know what community groups must do to get their new roof or to get their new project under way. They must put together a jigsaw puzzle of different, sometimes small funding pots that add up to the necessary total.
	I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us some of the details and that he can indicate that work is being done to improve access to the funds. However, the announcement covers £50 million over three years. If that scale of money is made available regularly, it will allow the renewal of village halls over time. No one suggests that all the renewal will take place in two or three years. In 2002, a study estimated that the backlog of necessary repairs was worth some £400 million, and there is no reason to think that that figure will have declined since then. In that context, I hope that the Minister will recognise that it is also important that the funding should roll on into the longer term. I appreciate that it is unlikely that firm commitments can be made today, but I hope that the Minister will give me some indication that it is recognised that a one-off, three-year £50 million fund will not tackle the problem once and for all any more than the similarly sized millennium fund did. Some £50 million went into village and community halls through that fund. It was very welcome and made a huge difference, but unfortunately such buildings do not stop ageing, so the need for renewals does not stop. I hope that there will be some indication of a willingness to address the matter.
	The new licensing laws have been discussed before, but I want to talk about the way in which they will affect community groups and village halls that are operated by volunteers. The Minister will be aware that a lot of campaigning has taken place on the requirement for community and village halls to have a specifically licensed individual if they hold more than 12 events a year involving alcohol. In the past it was possible to apply to magistrates before each individual event, and realistically few community or village halls hold only 12 events involving alcohol a year. During a wedding party, fête or amateur-dramatics event, one can almost guarantee that a bottle or glass of wine will be on offer, or be available to be won, but that requires a licence holder. Parties that local people put on—even, dare I say it, Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat events—tend to attract a bottle of wine or two along the way.
	I suspect that the Minister will say that most halls have managed to get their applications for licences in, which is true, but the problem is persuading volunteers to take on responsibilities that they perceive as possibly onerous. There has been an enormous effort to comply with the new laws and although not all halls have managed to do so, the majority have. However, people involved in those halls tell me that they had to twist arms to get volunteers to take on the responsibility and that it is extremely difficult to persuade people to do so. They think that it will take only one or two events to go wrong, with people being held to account for that, before the volunteers will start to dry up.
	I hope that the Minister will be able to go back to his colleagues to determine whether there is a way in which such community facilities, given the wide variety of organisations that use them and the voluntary nature of the people who run them, could be given a facility for licensing that made more sense and did not make people think that they were taking on legal liabilities beyond their capacity or willingness. If halls find that they increasingly run into difficulty attracting volunteers and are thus able to put on fewer facilities, their steady income stream from making bookings will go. That income is the fundamental way in which halls keep going from day to day.
	I have not come here to criticise the Minister. I welcome the announcement that has been made, for which hon. Members on both sides of the House and I have worked for a long time. We have clearly been listened to and that is good news.

Richard Caborn: I thank the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) for raising an important issue. The Big Lottery Fund must have noticed that he had secured today's debate and thus announced the £50 million funding—I do not know whether that is true or not. I am grateful for the opportunity to emphasise the fact that the House recognises the importance of village and community halls to the local services, well-being and necessary regeneration of rural communities.
	We understand that funding for new or replacement halls must come for a vibrant partnership. As the hon. Gentleman said, that partnership is made up of each local community and district, with county, regional and national bodies. We welcome the superb work that the Big Lottery Fund has undertaken in helping village halls to continue to play a vital role in many communities throughout the land.
	There are a wide number of reasons why village halls play such an important role in community life. The amenities that they provide are integral to the communities that they serve. They influence the survival of many community groups, local societies and interest societies. It is important that such groups continue to attract new members, and they improve the quality of life for many local residents. Furthermore, village halls increase community involvement and cohesion, so they need diverse community support to survive and to attract funding. When I was the licensing Minister I responded positively to representations from Action with Communities in Rural England about the number of events in such venues. I am not au fait with all the details, but I will take up the points that the hon. Gentleman made with the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), who is now responsible for licensing.
	Community halls are important, because they aid the provision of public services such as surgeries, outreach GP services, libraries, clubs and social events. As the Minister for Sport and Tourism I am pleased that many of them offer physical activities and run walking clubs. I was in Cornwall only a few weeks ago and met members of a vibrant walking club who had ended a walk at the Eden project. Many of those clubs are being run from village halls, which is welcome.
	Those are a few examples of the services that village halls provide and which reach out to communities, especially disadvantaged ones. Village halls provide a place for family learning, which encourages and enables lifelong learning and includes a wider range of activities and roles than those traditionally provided by libraries, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. That service will help to develop the untapped potential of libraries, as village halls are uniquely placed to offer a focus for community activity and development by widening their traditional role and providing a true community resource. I am pleased to be able to highlight the fact that the national lottery has supported community and village halls in a number of ways, and there has been a huge amount of good work in this area. The hon. Gentleman spoke warmly about the role of the Millennium Commission, which provided £65 million, while the Community Fund has awarded over £138 million to community buildings since 1995. That funding was viewed in a very positive light. Other distributors have funded appropriate projects within their remit for village halls and community buildings.
	Overall, the national lottery has awarded £258 million to village and community halls in the past 10 years. We would all agree that that impressive figure is evidence that the national lottery supports community buildings in a substantial and fundamental way. The Big Lottery Fund, as a major funder for communities, is building on the strengths and successes of what has gone before, as well as introducing exciting new approaches. Yesterday, as the hon. Gentleman said, the Big Lottery Fund announced that it will make £50 million available over three years through the community buildings programme to projects across England. That programme will focus solely on civil renewal. The hon. Gentleman asked me to spell out the criteria for that programme, but unfortunately I cannot do so because they have not been settled. The programme has been agreed in principle and it will become operational in 2006. I will, however, relay to the Government the points that he made about funding regimes posing difficulties for applicants.

Richard Caborn: I do, because the criteria is civil renewal. There has been substantial investment in village and community halls. We need to build on that, and make sure that they maintain existing services. Moreover, the need for library and communication services needs to be reconsidered. Hopefully, the civil renewal criteria will enable us to ensure that village and community halls are kept in good repair and can offer further services. With the changing landscape in rural areas, we need to keep on top of that. It is important that there are not information haves and have-nots, and community halls can play a significant role in that. I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman's remarks, and I will make sure that his points are conveyed to the Big Lottery Fund.
	The National Lottery Bill, which is currently in Committee, will bring into being the Big Lottery Fund. Through that Bill we will establish a one-stop shop. I recognise the frustration experienced by many applicants, especially small organisations. We are trying to get the Big Lottery Fund to take responsibility for a clearing house or one-stop shop for all lottery funding. Such an arrangement will help smaller organisations in particular to access lottery money.
	The lottery will continue to evolve in a number of ways. It will be able to give advice to organisations and offer loan facilities as well. That combination will assist smaller organisations to apply for lottery funding. The Government do not disagree with the principle of additionality, but sometimes we take it to the point where it militates against the involvement of other funding streams. When organisations such as the regional development agencies and local authorities are involved, we must be creative, while acknowledging that the lottery exists to provide additional funding. The additionality principle is important. I hope that what we are doing through the National Lottery Bill will allow more joined-up working of funding streams, remove frustration, add one-stop shops and achieve added value for the money going into schemes.
	That is what we will be doing over the next few weeks. If the hon. Gentleman will convey that to his Front-Bench colleagues, particularly the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), and encourage them to support the changes proposed by the Government, we will get through the Committee sooner than we would otherwise do. We will then be able to ensure that the Big Lottery Fund is delivering what the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) wants, in time for his next Adjournment debate.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.